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At a minimum a lot of money would be saved by standardized billing practices and costs. If Medicare pays too little then reimbursement could be adjusted. It wou
by maxxxxx 8y ago
At a minimum a lot of money would be saved by standardized billing practices and costs. If Medicare pays too little then reimbursement could be adjusted. It would lead to more transparency and less bureaucracy. I think that’s how it works in Germany. There are different insurers but they operate on a set of standards. It’s nuts that in the US every insurance negotiates separately with each provider. It’s extremely inefficient and also makes it basically impossible for the patient to do any price shopping.
- testpostpls 8y agoGermany saves money by paying doctors $70k/yr. There isn’t a clever, low-impact policy shift that’ll save a ton of money in the US. Something really big has to give.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI grew up there and the doctors I knew had very nice houses and cars. Maybe they were not as rich as of US doctors but certainly pretty well paid.
- acdha 8y agoDo you have a citation for that? The sources I found suggest that’s the starting salary and it goes up considerably.
- testpostpls 8y agoSome doctors are paid that little in Germany. Here’s an comparative analysis on 2008 data: average net outflows to physicians are higher, but it seems like US physicians may be receiving a substantially larger slice of the budgetary pie https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0204 https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2010....
- acdha 8y agoThat shows MDs making almost twice what you claimed ($130k vs. $70k). Not as high as Americans but that seems insufficient to explain the huge cost differential.
- marchenko 8y agoGerman doctors have much lower school debt and relatively lower tort exposure. Salaries in Germany are significantly lower across the board, so German physicians enjoy similar financial positioning relative to other professionals, and high social status. Any attempt to reduce physician salaries in the US is going to have to also address medical school debt and physician insurance requirements & administrative overhead.
- itronitron 8y agoand on top of that, there is a pervasive risk that a patient's provider (doctor or surgeon) may drop 'out of network' without any notice to patients. If you ever schedule surgery in the US then you need to confirm on the day of the surgery that all the attending doctors are still in network, meaning that your insurance will cover it.
- maxxxxx 8y agoYou also have to check any new doctor during and after surgery while you are unconscious :-).
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoEspecially, in my experience, anesthesiologists. They often aren't on my plan, even though the entire rest of the hospital is.