<story><title>The prices hospitals negotiate with private insurers for patient services</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/22/upshot/hospital-prices.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bradleyjg</author><text>The problem is intractable in no small part because most people are unwilling to acknowledge where the vast bulk of the money is going—-healthcare workers. They keep on looking for bad guys like insurance or drug company executives. There are some of these, and they do make a lot of money, but in the face of nearly $4 trillion in spending they don’t move the needle. The one million doctors do. The 3.8 million nurses do.</text></item><item><author>recursivedoubts</author><text>Daily reminder that the US spends vastly more, per capita, in &lt;i&gt;government&lt;/i&gt; heath expenditures[1], than any other country.&lt;p&gt;We pay for socialized healthcare, and then some, it&amp;#x27;s just that most of us don&amp;#x27;t get it.&lt;p&gt;I view the problem as impossible to solve until there is a collapse.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_total_hea...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>himinlomax</author><text>Do you count the people who are paid to dispute every single insurance claim and fill insurer-specific forms as &amp;quot;health care workers&amp;quot;?</text></comment>
<story><title>The prices hospitals negotiate with private insurers for patient services</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/22/upshot/hospital-prices.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bradleyjg</author><text>The problem is intractable in no small part because most people are unwilling to acknowledge where the vast bulk of the money is going—-healthcare workers. They keep on looking for bad guys like insurance or drug company executives. There are some of these, and they do make a lot of money, but in the face of nearly $4 trillion in spending they don’t move the needle. The one million doctors do. The 3.8 million nurses do.</text></item><item><author>recursivedoubts</author><text>Daily reminder that the US spends vastly more, per capita, in &lt;i&gt;government&lt;/i&gt; heath expenditures[1], than any other country.&lt;p&gt;We pay for socialized healthcare, and then some, it&amp;#x27;s just that most of us don&amp;#x27;t get it.&lt;p&gt;I view the problem as impossible to solve until there is a collapse.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_total_hea...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sokoloff</author><text>That’s 4.8M people. I don’t know what “vast bulk of the money” would mean numerically, but let’s posit that it’s not less than half.&lt;p&gt;Half of $4T&amp;#x2F;yr is $2T&amp;#x2F;yr or over $415K&amp;#x2F;yr for the average nurse or doctor.&lt;p&gt;So, either “vast bulk” is well under half, nurses make a ton more than I think, or some assumption above is incorrect.</text></comment>