Hacker News Reader

Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

> rising faster than inflation for several years

Over here in Canada healthcare spending has been rising faster than general inflation more or less continuously since the 1960s. Seems to be generally true of many wealthy countries. More tech and therapies. And an ageing population. And probably other factors.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Health_care_cost_r...

View on HN

Another factor is Baumol's cost disease. While some aspects of healthcare have been automated, much of it still comes down to individual clinicians performing procedures on patients.

https://a16z.com/solving-baumols-cost-disease-in-healthcare/

Salaries probably pay factor as well? Check the sunshine list, plenty of radiologists making 600k/year. That's literally 10x of the median salary.

That does not explain everything. While you could make a reasonable case that doctors are overpaid in the US, the same budgetary crisis is happening all over Europe where salaries are much lower.

The crisis in France is clearly not on the same level that is in Quebec. It's not the only factor, but a serious one. As a continuation of it we have a heavily caped number of doctors what can be 'minted' every year. Same caps exist in the USA states.

This also happens in Italy, there's a maximum number of people who can get into med school. However, even though some complain of being overworked, some others complain that increasing that maximum number will lead to unemployment. So apparently medical professionals can either be overworked or unemployed, there is no in between..

Perhaps in the US, but nobody is getting paid that in most public European systems. A quick google suggests that the absolute highest pay band for a doctor in the UK is ~£142k (~$190k USD). And there won't be many making that.

See: https://www.worktheworld.co.uk/blog/highest-paying-medical-j...

Sure but at least radiologists do something. What do hospital administrators do? Like a university a hospital has bureaucracy that grows.

This cherrypicks a high billing specialty, doesn't appreciate an overhead of 25-40% for most physicians, and also overestimates the proportion of physician salaries in healthcare budgets (~15%). You could literally pay physicians half and not save that much.

Also is that too high? I know a guy in his early 40s still finishing his 2nd radiology fellowship (4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 5 years radiology, 1-2 years each fellowship = cost of his 20s/30s) to get a job...

I find HN comments on healthcare compensation when it comes up funny because on the other hand compensation expectations in the tech gold mine here are justified. E.g. I take home less in CDN dollars than an L3 SE at google without benefits. I'm happy with what I do/get but there is a mismatch in rationalizing high compensation, markedly more years of university and training, and from my point providing a societal benefit.

Yeah hospital accounting is weird. I had family in the ER and one of their crappy meals was like $60, for basically just rice and canned vegetables on a tray. A single bandaid cost like $25 or something outrageous like that. This was pre-covid too. I'm sure that same meal is getting close to $100 by now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com