Mapping Every Dollar of America's $5T Healthcare System

Amazing, every single dollar goes to care! Not a single dollar to overhead! Where are these insurance companies' profit margins coming from? How do they even pay their executives' salaries? Boy have I been mistaken about how inefficient the American system is

Here's an idea. If other countries can provide healthcare for much less per patient, why can't they sell that to Americans?

In other words, allow US citizens to "opt out" of the US healthcare system and participate in the German one? You'd have to make some allowances for replacing taxes with costs, billing, and allow "German" healthcare to operate in the US ...

It's a truism that America's system was never designed -- it's a patchwork of different pieces that each pay for some people in some situations.

But I've been reading about our system, since I fell down a rabbit hole a couple years ago. Things are bad, yes, but there are actually interesting ideas out there, and real efforts at reform that are being tried.

For example, did you know Maryland has a different way of funding hospitals than most other states? [0] And that other states are interested in copying it?

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/22/21055118/m...

All the categories on the right side look perfectly reasonable. However what fraction of those big categories on the right, Hospitals and Physicians... that make up over half of the total, is siphoned off to pay for administratium or "shareholder value" and what fraction actually pays for medical care delivered?

"A Fairytale Map of Every Dollar of America's $5T Healthcare System" is the complete, accurate title.

Is this funded by an insurance company?

Where are salaries? Where are administration overhead? Where are insurance company profits and dividends coming from?

This whole thing loses all credibility by not listing those things.

The healthcare system in the US is, indeed, the best...if you're rich. If you're not rich, you're gonna spend a lot of time on the phone, arguing with bureaucrats and getting treated like shit.

A friend of mine is rich. We both have a health insurance plan from UnitedHealthcare. His experience is radically different from mine. He can make a phone call, and actually talk to his doctor within a few minutes. He can see his doctor the same day he asks to. He talks to one person who manages all the BS for him.

So it's a jobs program