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Does anyone know the % of the healthcare budget made up by physician salaries?
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We bill around 40% of the costs however the salaries themselves only consist of around 15-20%. Everything else goes to lab techs radiology techs nursing staff office staff overhead....etc
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it's about 15% of the total. I can't remember where I saw this, but it was a reliable source, I believe. I'd go with JAMA.
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Physicians salaries is an insignificant part of healthcare cost. In fact, any other industry you pick will surrender almost 60% of it total cost to the human resources running that industry.
Interesting you brought this up, as I just read statistics on this yesterday. According to Robert Lowes, Medical Economics' senior editor, out of a $100 bill, an average of 41% goes to a physician's paycheck. Factor in insurance's contribution to the overall cost of care for a procedure, and the physician's proportion becomes lower than 41%, depending on the coverage, so the above percentages do not sound unreasonable.
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Sounds about right, and I'd go with JAMA's 15% overall.
Only medicare/medicaid reimbursement would come out of the budget. Everything else would come from the private sector. If a physician didn't accept m/m wouldn't 0% come from the nation's health care budget?
1999 NEJM article shows about 20% or 200 billion of the 1 trillion dollars spent on healthcare in this country over the 1990s with that fraction remaining fairly consistant as projected into the 2000s -- too bad I don't have a newer article.
"The American Healthcare System" Jan 7 1999, JK IGLEHART.
"The American Healthcare System" Jan 7 1999, JK IGLEHART.
Because nurses, rad techs, janitors, etc aren't actually people?
Wait, you're telling me that they're not automatrons and transformers like androids? [/sarcasm]
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We actually just had an MD/PHD talk to us about this the other day and he also cited the 15% JAMA number. But he also said that about 50% of that 15% went directly into physician overhead.
So, take home money for physicians (after overhead) is 7.5%, he said.
numbers sound about right. there is short op-ed from a princeton professor who specialized in health econ on this topic. see link below. (his numbers were ~20% of the national spending, but only 50% of that 20 is actually the doctor salary)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/opinion/l05doctors.html?scp=2&sq=uwe doctor&st=cse
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/opinion/l05doctors.html?scp=2&sq=uwe doctor&st=cse
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