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Companies are going to grow around this data. An entire industry might grow around this data, and it will be an industry that I support every time I pay an insa

Companies are going to grow around this data. An entire industry might grow around this data, and it will be an industry that I support every time I pay an insanely high insurance premium or medical bill. 15% of our workers are in the medical system [0], and this doesn't even include the surrounding insurance industries or pharma industries (I think). Someone has to pay all these people, and that someone is me when I pay high insurance premiums and high medical bills. I'm picturing a satirical 40s style poster that shows the doctor putting a bandaid on Timmy's knee, and then mom doing her patriotic duty and writing out a $1000 check. The poster then shows that the $1000 supports medical coders who know all the codes for duck attacks, and the pharma advertisers who one-up even Broadway and Hollywood with their 90-second advertisements, and the people who reassemble the poorly organized data this article talks about, and--oh yeah, there's a few bucks left for the doctor too. I used to work at a company that does background checks on doctors. We'd gather data from all 50 states, all of it in different formats, all of it a pain to work with. Hundreds of people were involved in this process, all of us ultimately paid through high hospital bills (hospitals were our customers). With the right regulation, we all could have been replaced with a 50 line Python script. Ultimately, if we're going to build a medical system that takes 15% to 20% of our workers to run, then we're going to have to pay for that. The problem is that "let's make the industry more efficient and put a lot of people out of work" is not politically popular. [0]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/who-are-our-health-care-workers.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/who-are-our-h...

elcritch 3y ago
There's a similar issue in academia. Tuition costs have risen far faster than inflaction but the number of professors per student is roughly similar. Where does all the extra go? Administrators and bureaucracy!
- lesuorac 3y ago
  I mean based on all the numbers provided it could have also go into - Construction costs of smaller classrooms - Advanced labs - Land Taxes --- But also if the number of students & teachers has increased at a proportional rate then tuition would be expected to increase to cover the more administrators required to administrate the increased staff.
- secabeen 3y ago
  There's two things here. First, payment for the cost of education has two major parts: tuition, and state allocations to higher ed. When tuition goes up, it can mean that education costs have risen, that state allocations have gone down, or both. Although there have been some understandable increases in the cost of education, the main driver in the increase in the nameplate tuition is the decreases in state allocations. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... Second, the nameplate tuition number that looks to have risen is not even the amount that most students pay, as most students get financial aid. The correct number to judge whether tuition has gone up is the Net tuition number. Most reports of the net tuition number show that it has gone up much much less than the nameplate number, but it's also not public in the same way. If we had an anonymized national database of net tuition paid by all students receiving any amount of a federal financial aid, it would go a long way towards improving the quality of the discussion around higher education costs.
  - TheJoeMan 3y ago
    I paid MORE to sit at home on zoom during Covid, through a "distance learning fee". And that money didn't even go towards buying the professors decent internet.
Wojtkie 3y ago
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cobertos 3y ago
What sort of company could you start around this data? It looks like this parent company (turquoise.health) is already targeting price comparisons ("rate sense"), contract negotiations for people/companies who purchase health care ("clear contracts") and other parts of the value chain. Are there any other parts of the value chain left? I can't think of anything...

elcritch 3y ago

There's a similar issue in academia. Tuition costs have risen far faster than inflaction but the number of professors per student is roughly similar. Where does all the extra go? Administrators and bureaucracy!

lesuorac 3y ago
I mean based on all the numbers provided it could have also go into - Construction costs of smaller classrooms - Advanced labs - Land Taxes --- But also if the number of students & teachers has increased at a proportional rate then tuition would be expected to increase to cover the more administrators required to administrate the increased staff.
secabeen 3y ago
There's two things here. First, payment for the cost of education has two major parts: tuition, and state allocations to higher ed. When tuition goes up, it can mean that education costs have risen, that state allocations have gone down, or both. Although there have been some understandable increases in the cost of education, the main driver in the increase in the nameplate tuition is the decreases in state allocations. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... Second, the nameplate tuition number that looks to have risen is not even the amount that most students pay, as most students get financial aid. The correct number to judge whether tuition has gone up is the Net tuition number. Most reports of the net tuition number show that it has gone up much much less than the nameplate number, but it's also not public in the same way. If we had an anonymized national database of net tuition paid by all students receiving any amount of a federal financial aid, it would go a long way towards improving the quality of the discussion around higher education costs.
- TheJoeMan 3y ago
  I paid MORE to sit at home on zoom during Covid, through a "distance learning fee". And that money didn't even go towards buying the professors decent internet.

Wojtkie 3y ago

[dead]

cobertos 3y ago

What sort of company could you start around this data? It looks like this parent company (turquoise.health) is already targeting price comparisons ("rate sense"), contract negotiations for people/companies who purchase health care ("clear contracts") and other parts of the value chain. Are there any other parts of the value chain left? I can't think of anything...