this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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Means Morning News covered this point, but what they said was notably different. This article never once mentions the reason this was being done: to bring private insurance payouts closer into line with Medicare ones, as part of a long-running effort to improve the cost efficiency of the healthcare system. So in that sense, this policy change isn't great.
This article goes out of its way to avoid mentioning government-run health insurance though, for some reason...
(Side note: the article isn't actually wrong that US doctors make way too fucking much money. In order to realize improved healthcare costs once we have passed M4A in this country, we're going to have to cut doctor compensation down to the bone. I would imagine this would be paired with debt relief for existing doctors, and the elimination of tuition at medical schools, a la Cuba, but the fact is that doctors cannot be pulling down salaries in the six to low-seven figures under M4A if it's going to work at all.)
Physician pay only makes up 7.5% of healthcare costs in the US. So while debt relief and elimination of tuition coinciding with a reduction in physician compensation could be a reasonable reform, especially to bring specialists in line with PCPs, there will also have to be protections in place to prevent that downward pressure from creating yet more fertile ground for private equity to consume even more practices.
If we've passed M4A, I'd like to think a ban on private equity in healthcare would already be on the books, but yeah, I agree with you.
Most people think of the doctor's salary but you'd claw out your eyes looking at the administrative salaries and then remember they give themselves large bonuses every fiscal year.
That’s the whole point of single payer. If there’s only one insurance entity, the state, then doctors either take the rates the state pays or they only take patients who can pay out of pocket, which unsurprisingly is not feasible for the overwhelming majority of doctors. Which also removes bloat as a huge chunk of healthcare costs go into claims processing departments that are constantly playing back and forth with the various health insurance companies. If you compare a major urban hospital in America with a comparable one in Canada, the Canadian one will be a tiny fraction of the size of the American one.