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I think you are right to be suspicious. For example, back when I lived in the US and went for a checkup at a big hospital in NY: first there were greeters at th
by gniv 3y ago
I think you are right to be suspicious. For example, back when I lived in the US and went for a checkup at a big hospital in NY: first there were greeters at the entrance of the building, then a greeter on the right floor, then a small army of receptionists, then a nurse, then a PA, then the doctor. All these are expenses. Are they necessary? Here in France there is, maybe, a receptionist that sends me to the office where the doctor does everything, including billing. (Frankly, both ways seem a bit extreme.)
- edmundsauto 3y agoI believe it is common for the greeters to be vounteers
- RHSeeger 3y ago> Here in France there is, maybe, a receptionist that sends me to the office where the doctor does everything, including billing. If the doctor is making an order of magnitude more for their time than the receptionist, it's far more effective to have more receptionists for the work either of them could do.
- gniv 3y agoIn principle yes, but the overhead of having an extra person is big. The extra effort done by the doctor is small, especially since a lot of stuff is automated and works well (like appointments and integration with the state insurance). Yes, I was surprised too.
- Jensson 3y agoThe trick is to pay doctors less, a country can easily lower doctor salaries by educating more doctors, there is no lack of people who want to be doctors.
- RHSeeger 3y agoAs I understand it, "educating more doctors" in the US is a lot more complicated than it sounds. There's a number of different organizations involved, each setting their own limits for their "step" of the process; and there's motivation to not increase the throughput.
- Projectiboga 3y agoThe supply of MDs & DOs has been kept very low compared to our population growth. The US ends up poaching Drs from around the world. But the actual biggest cost in our medical system is the excessive high administration costs, above the Medicare admin level of 3% it's about 27-29% extra with private insurance and the medical billing side. We have about 27% uninsured. The money is there and going single payer would create savings by delaying lag to care, it would increase preventive care and have a lot of second order savings like with liability insurance. The estimates are at least 3/4 of Americans would save money the first year.