The 2.8%

 

On January 28th, I blogged about the “commercial” in the WSJ proclaiming how insurance companies are going to pay primary care doctors more.   I called it a trap because really it is a bait and switch using unproven quality indicators.   A buddy of mine pointed out the graphic above that was in this article.  I could not believe my eyes.   Of the 954,000 doctors in the United States, there are a little over 352,00 primary care doctors.   With the impending shortage of doctors and the desperate need for primary care docs, it blew me away to find out that the engine running our healthcare system accounts for only 2.8% of our healthcare dollars.  If you said 28% I would have said that sounds low.  But 2.8%!  We are the ones doing most of the work.  We are the grunts.  We are the ones in the trenches.   Where’s the money going?   Well, look at the graph.  I would love to see how much of our healthcare dollars goes to administrators’ salaries (hospital costs exceed 45%). Since there are 5 administrators to every doctor, it seems to reason that there are 15 administrators to every primary care doctor (a crime in upon itself but that is another story).  Who wants to bet that there salaries make up  more than 2.8%?   And that, my friends, is what is wrong with the American healthcare system.