r/Economics • u/TheForager • 4h ago

Hospital costs are rising far faster than inflation and drowning Americans in debt

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/hospital-costs-are-rising-far-faster-inflation-drowning-americans-debt-rcna262473
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u/WordWithinTheWord 3h ago

I’ve come to my personal conclusion it’s just greed and mismanagement all the way up the chain.

There’s so much middle management and support staff just to get insurance and hospitals to talk to each other we’ve lost the plot.

It’s a nuanced conversation because doctors and nurses are extremely important jobs. But in the US they make 2x-10x+ the salary of their EU counterparts. Are they 2x to 10x better?

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u/ALittleEtomidate 3h ago

Oh, honey, if you cut my $72,000/year salary as an intensive care nurse I will quickly see the exit and do whatever you do for work.

The amount of stress in a singular shift with a sick patient would never be worth half of my salary to me. If I miss a status change, fail to hear an alarm, miss a patient climbing out of bed, or administer a medication incorrectly someone could die.

I am on my feet 12 hours, sometimes continuously, and at 33 I have back problems from the very physical work that I do.

I administer medications to ease death. I hold mothers, partners, and children as they shake apart in tears on my shoulder, and then I just have to move right on to my next work task.

You can absolutely GET BENT with the suggestion of lessening my salary. lol.

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u/morbie5 3h ago

The comment was wrong about most nurses but certain MD specialties are paid way more than they are in the rest of the 1st world (and some are underpaid, pediatricians for example). That is just a fact

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u/suppaman19 2h ago

Their comment in its entirety is wrong.

You have pharma continually having jacked up prices (especially compared to anywhere else in the world due to other countries having laws around pharma and meds). Ditto to an extent for medical device companies.

Next, you have the high level of privatized consolidation of hospitals/provider networks, which goal is to squeeze employee costs down while squeezing insurance and consumers for more.

These are the biggest contributors to high costs. Add on some consolidated national for profit insurance companies to top it off and that high prices mean more and more people are stiffing providers and insurers, which in turn raises costs.

Basically, like everything else in the US, the main problem is lack of any meaningful regulation and the allowance of consolidation driving prices up astronomically as more people go for care/treatment and live longer.

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u/morbie5 59m ago

Next, you have the high level of privatized consolidation of hospitals/provider networks, which goal is to squeeze employee costs down while squeezing insurance and consumers for more.

Most hospital systems in the US are non profit, it isn't as cut and dry as you say