Imo, spherical cow economist take on a field they know little about. The graphic lumps all "Inpatient & outpatient care" together, which is insane. Is it saying all that money is going to physicians, nurses, etc? It seems to imply that, but my guess is much of it ends up in hospital administration costs. Also in this way the cost of UHC etc isn't just their own admin overhead; it also add the hospital's admin and billing costs of dealing with them.
As for the author's claim that the doctor/nurse/admin assistant should know how much your treatment costs beforehand, lol. Yes, in an ideal world they absolutely would tell you. No, in reality they do not know. There's a whole apparatus of administrators and software spanning the hospital and insurance companies with bajillions of codes and negotiated rates. Noah Smith instead thinks doctors/nurses/admin assistants know ahead of time what each treatment costs but decline to inform consumers? A slightly dated but still relevant book is O'Reilly Hacking Healthcare. Iirc there are whole chapters on billing. It's just very complicated to figure out costs before treatment, and that's the fault of insurance/administration, not doctors/nurses/admin assistants.
It at least implies 2 anti medical worker claims. 1) excess healthcare costs are driven by medical worker salaries 2) medical workers could clarify prices but do not in order to mislead patients. Both totally miss the real problems of healthcare cost: the complexity of admin/billing leads to not just increased costs in insurance companies but also in hospital administration, and obscures costs for patients.
Btw, there are good ways of reducing physician costs. Allow straight to med school with no college, reduce med school requirements, maybe let residents change programs. If you make it much easier to become a physician without hurting care too much you then naturally pass savings on to patients. You can have legitimate criticisms of the AMA or hospital administration without jumping to ah greedy providers.
As for the author's claim that the doctor/nurse/admin assistant should know how much your treatment costs beforehand, lol. Yes, in an ideal world they absolutely would tell you. No, in reality they do not know. There's a whole apparatus of administrators and software spanning the hospital and insurance companies with bajillions of codes and negotiated rates. Noah Smith instead thinks doctors/nurses/admin assistants know ahead of time what each treatment costs but decline to inform consumers? A slightly dated but still relevant book is O'Reilly Hacking Healthcare. Iirc there are whole chapters on billing. It's just very complicated to figure out costs before treatment, and that's the fault of insurance/administration, not doctors/nurses/admin assistants.
It at least implies 2 anti medical worker claims. 1) excess healthcare costs are driven by medical worker salaries 2) medical workers could clarify prices but do not in order to mislead patients. Both totally miss the real problems of healthcare cost: the complexity of admin/billing leads to not just increased costs in insurance companies but also in hospital administration, and obscures costs for patients.