Happy New Year!
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Everyone has an opinion about healthcare, almost nobody expressing this opinion has the slightest idea what's going on and that often includes people in healthcare, often this is downstream of politics (ex: docs foaming at the mouth at anti-vaxxers, or advocating for "socialized" healthcare without knowing what that means) or arrogance (the "medicine isn't hard or complicated" crowd you see here frequently).
Yes follow the money. Some high resource health systems are doing well, but many health systems are being bailed out or going under. Salaries are decreasing relative to inflation (or just overall), burnout is increasing and we've had a bunch of major major strikes/threats of strikes over poor pay and working conditions (like unsafe nursing staffing ratios). Meanwhile:
"The nation's largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group and Elevance Health, reported profits that were 28 percent and 7 percent higher than the same period last year, respectively. UnitedHealth raked in $5.3 billion, while Elevance took in $1.6 billion.
In contrast, some of the nation's largest health systems, HCA and Tenet, saw their profits fall dramatically compared to the third quarter of 2021. HCA reported $1.13 billion in profits, a decrease of 50 percent. Tenet took in $131 million, which is down 70 percent since last year."
Notably HCA and Tenet are both pretty evil companies (large for profit health systems) that will do WHATEVER to make a buck (and have been in legal trouble over it).
Medical billing isn't "ridiculous" okay well it is, but it makes sense and is a well defined system that a lot of people don't understand... but again people don't understand it but everyone is forced to interact and therefore has opinions. Providers become the punching bag for appropriate medical decisions patients don't understand and administrative/billing decisions that providers have zero control or influence over (having being pushed out of medical leadership and admin for decades, sometimes by complicated government mandate).
Speaking of which why is this shit so expensive? People like to blame salaries and labor shortages but that's a lack of understanding at best and jealousy at worst. Our population is getting less healthy (and other countries are catching up in costs as they become like us) and care is getting more complicated and expensive for good reasons. Additionally regulatory and administrative burden means lots of extra hands sucking at the teat. It's similar to academia (think professor to admin ratios, self-inflicted wounds like DEI staff etc).
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