https://www.kff.org/health-costs/key-facts-about-hospitals/?...

It is also unclear how this is any different than traveling nurses which operate similarly.

What is the solution that doesn’t result in at least some large group of people making less money?

thanks free market

Nurses form the backbone of healthcare. Treat them as such.

Edit: To those downvoting me, talk to a real nurse and I bet you wouldn't take twice the pay to do half the work they have to deal with.

We can assume all gig economy companies do this? Brave new world indeed.

Uber took an axe to taxi drivers which weren't a popular group to begin with so that was easy. With the "disruption" perfected, next up are doctors, nurses, lawyers, electricians, cooks, engineers, the sky is the limit.

I used Zocdoc in the past to find a doctor and ended up with a doctor who just charged out-of-pocket instead of insurance, and it worked great. Would an app that shows up-front pricing be better for the consumer?

Like nurses are just an expense.

Ripe for disruption!

In before someone says that your reasoning is flawed because that is very incorrect perception of the field. All I see is that regulatory capture has worked very well here and is simply stopping totally novel and practical ideas which work on tradeoffs from even taking off

On the one hand, a good nurse is invaluable. They do the hard work that doctors won’t/don’t do, and can be so kind and generous during your time of need.

On the other ones, there are so many who mail it in and are just milking the system

Healthcare is so expensive - some nurses are making 500k a year - their union contracts base vary from 200k to 300k for something like 32-36 hours per week

On top of that, they can pretty much work unlimited overtime with zero restrictions. They can work enough overtime hours such that they can nearly double their salary. And that’s how you come up with the 500k figure I posted

Granted, that’s at the top of the range, I’m talking about somewhere like the Bay Area, and does require a ton of overtime, but those extra 100s of thousands add up. These hours can’t be spread around to minimize the amount of time and a half or double pay paid out, per contract they go in order of seniority

This is just nurses and I imagine it’s something similar but with higher rates for specialists like anesthesiologists and still beyond that doctors and surgeons

I don’t begrudge anyone’s salaries, but it’s a zero sum game. There’s a reason why, aside from typical corporate profit maximization, you wind up with a 30k bill for a short visit. Even if you account for the lower rates insurance companies pay, it’s still in the thousands of dollars for treatment where you were seen for less than 30 minutes

Like I said, to be clear, I don’t begrudge anyone’s salaries - this is just an under discussed point when we talk about healthcare costs

Labor is generally reported as 60% of the costs of hospitals - so if you’d ever want to talk about making healthcare affordable you’d have to address this which I feel like is a bit of a taboo subject. Many nurses are in a union which makes it an even more difficult conversation

All that is to say, I can see the motivation behind stuff like this, even if I don’t agree with it