Its a good article. One of the problems with health care is that, unlike cars, we just can't quite mass produce it in the same way. Portions of it we can, the pills, the soap, etc, but whenever I've been to a hospital the admin staff on hand always does seem to me to be omnipresent.Originally Posted by Shanty
If I were to ask you which is more expensive, visiting a doctor's office or going to the hospital, by definition we're almost always going to say "hospital' [as a general rule allowing for minor exceptions]
If you think about this, this is counterintuitive.
Let's take a thought experiment. You have a building with 100 doctors practicing medicine alone.
At a convention for this building, they get together and one of them gets the idea that perhaps they can collaborate to reduce costs.
Seems reasonable, right?
What are they going to do? They're going to reduce redundancies, instead of 100 doctors having 100 receptionists and 100 medical billing personnel, they'll enjoy the economies of scale and have 'less' workers in that area since perhaps 10 people can answer the calls for 100 doctors (or whatever the case is).
Likewise, doctors can share marginally used equipment like MRI / X-Ray, etc
If you follow the thought experiment through it would seem that the 100 solo doctors practicing medicine would slowly and surely make a larger organization that would start to look like --> a hospital....
And yet obviously they're NOT really cheaper are they!
Why aren't we enjoying economies of scale in hospitals? They do seem to be 'admin heavy'
Insurance companies take 40% of the top of this nation's medical costs.
Eliminate the insurance companies from the equation, and you've solved the hospital administration problem too.
I mean, this is so simple: get rid of the insurance companies! Get rid of 'em - put 'em out of business. You lose 100,000 jobs (big deal, we did that the last few months anyway), but you gain 40% of your healthcare costs back, which means we have an "out" when they declare ObamaCare un-Constitutional.
Some good thoughts from you.
I would think it's done somewhat now, with doctors' groups having several doctors practicing through the group. This could be anywhere from 2 or 3 doctors being partners or associates (my doctor shares space with another GP) or , in the case of an orthopedic group I've been treated for, there could be 30 or more. The insurance companies are inefficient, because they can't do the payments for services rendered as cheaply and efficiently as the government soing a single payer system.
But unlike nonsqtr's post, you still need to have an efficient means of coverage for people. That's where single payer comes in and works best.
Eliminate Obamacare and government waste and fraud in medicare and Medicaid and you fix it
Not at all. You'd make health care more expensive for those under the Medicare age, more expensive for businesses who provide coverage for employees, and go back to having another 50-75 million people with no coverage at all. And Medicare/Medicaid already has less waste and fraud than the private insurers now.
No Obamacare is doing that
Obamacare Hurts Seniors - James C. Capretta - National Review Online
You should get better sources that deal in real math...
Idea of the Day: The Affordable Care Act Is Lowering Health Care Costs
I would expect nothing less from your left wing lying link
Understanding the Health Care Law: The Obamacare Disaster | Heartlander Magazine
The five tax hikes in Obamacare that most hurt seniors | The Daily Caller
GHEI: Obamacare's mounting costs - Washington Times
I don't know if this answers your question, but when we think of 'going to the doctor,' we're thinking of a GP, which is by far the cheapest sort of doctor--they make less money, etc. Hospitals are full of specialists, and we go to hospitals mostly after being referred by a GP. Also, hospital costs factor in the cost of all that bad health care that nobody pays for--the emergency room and care paid for because the hospital can't get out of treating people who show up sick but won't/can't pay. That vastly inflates the cost of care, because those who can/do pay have to cover those who don't/can't.
Also, few doctor's offices have MRI machines and other fancy and expensive equipment, which is expensive to purchase and operate.
Hospitals would operate with much greater efficiency if (as you noted) if they had a steady supply of people sick in all the same ways, with little variation. Then they could be like factories. Instead, they have to be like restaurants: they keep the equipment and raw materials constantly on hand, along with people with the skills to make those things work, and wait for customers to show up. That's inherently inefficient. Which is why it's more expensive to run a restaurant than buy Stouffers.
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