Read on Twitter
Mythbusting: Doctors are the reason healthcare costs are high in US. THREAD
1/ seeing lots of Tweets like this one
2/ first off would like to point out, @crampell ‘s assertion that biggest chunk of healthcare spending is on providers is flat out wrong.
3/ Here’s AMA breakdown
4/ here’s @KFF breakdown
5/ if you break it down to physician/practitioner pay, it’s about 8-10% https://jacksonhealthcare.com/media-room/news/md-salaries-as-percent-of-costs/
6/ No matter how you break it down, MD pay is 3rd compared to hospital care, “other”.
7/ so why do we keep seeing articles like this?
8/ lots of reasons. First & foremost, it’s obvious healtgcare costs in US have spiraled out of control. US healthcare is now a $3.5 T industry
9/but to blame it on doctors’ salaries perpetrates a myth https://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfoundation/2017/11/27/debunking-myths-physicians-incomes-are-too-high-and-they-are-the-cause-of-rising-health-care-costs/
10/ did you know, if every MD took a 20% paycut, it would result in 2% healthcare savings? That doesn’t exactly follow the Willie Sutton rule of go where the money is
11/ if you run a business, you want to cut the unnecessary expenses, or fat, to save costs. A recent Jama publication sheds light https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2752664
12/ It’s top waste: administrative complexity, at $265.6B
13/ put another way, we essentially pay doctors in the US the same we pay to submit, process & pay insurance claims.
14/ that’s a lot of middle men. A secret of US healthcare—one reason it’s so hard to reform is b/c of all the (pernicious) jobs & $ it makes https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/07/what-is-the-effect-of-obamacare-economy-000164
15/ further, the public has a hard time pointing the finger to administrative costs. Most of my colleagues can’t identify what a PBM ($356B revenue), GPO ($5B), or US billing company ($3.5B) does
16/ how many Americans know the US healthcare industry makes $715B in revenue a year? (Approximately 255% more revenue than MDs take in) https://naic.org/documents/topic_insurance_industry_snapshots_2018_health_ins_ind_report.pdf
17/ they continue to perpetuate that doctors are rich...this 2017 study showed participants thought doctors made 1500% more than they did for procedures https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29086466/
18/ it’s easy to perpetuate the myth that doctors add to healthcare costs b/c we’re the face of medicine. But the truth is, we are but 8-10% of a $3.5T econoomy would be 5th largest economy in world (ahead of UK GDP)
19/ Congress is hesitant to cut the bloated healthcare market which make up $3.5 T of our GDP. & at least 15-30% of that ($500B-1T) is in unnecessary middlemen (3-4x what MDs get paid for actually providing care).
20/ meanwhile, the biggest bloatmen, US Health Insurers, continue to lobby for Benchmarking, while cutting networks & raising premiums.
