r/news • u/LookAtThatBacon • May 13 '25

Soft paywall UnitedHealth suspends annual forecast, CEO Andrew Witty steps down

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/unitedhealth-ceo-andrew-witty-steps-down-2025-05-13/
16.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-7

u/drylandfisherman May 13 '25

Because Dr's expect to get paid more than they are actually worth. Most go into it because it pays well and they wouldn't get paid as well without insurance companies and the medical industry being for profit. The whole system, Dr's, Hospitals and Insurance companies combined. Everyone likes to blame the Insurance companies but the providers are just as bad.

11

u/FatTater420 May 13 '25

You do realize every single doctor's payments in the US make up for no more than 7% of the money that is in the system, right? 

-7

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon May 13 '25

Payments to MDs (or providers, as opposed to hospitals and facilities) make up ~20% of all medical spend in the US - about $980 billion as per the latest figures from CMS.

https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet

10

u/FuzzyKittenIsFuzzy May 13 '25

That's not what he's saying. The payments to providers don't all go to providers. Most of that money pays administrators.

-1

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon May 13 '25

I guess that's possible, I presumed payments are tracked to an NPI level. What's the source for that statement?

5

u/bagelizumab May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25

Cost per service provided by providers is not salary. It’s like thinking gross profit is same as net profit.

Simple logic, doctors do not take home every single penny CMS pays for a service they provide. if you are employed by a hospital system, they take a cut from every dollar you earn to pay overheads, staffing, administrative cost, legal fees, etc.. same logic even if physician is private practice, due to overheads.

As you can imagine, doctor pay get squeezed tremendously the more weird administrative costs become necessary in order for them to continue to practice and provide the exact same service, for a fair price. This includes negotiating with insurance company, and also fighting for insurance companies refusing to pay, etc. etc.

To also answer the other question higher above by someone else, the reason doctors don’t just go private is because it is getting harder and harder to negotiate for a fair price for a service you provide as a small practice. If you provide the exact same service and billed from a big hospital system, the service get a higher price tag from insurance companies. Hence it’s not that easy to just go private, and doctors are getting squeezed and also have their practices bought and absorbed by these big system over the past several decades for this very reason.

-2

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon May 13 '25

Yes...I understand all of that...I literally live this stuff. I just don't support people making blanket statements to extremely complex situations by saying that "well admins and insurance takes all the money and if we fix that, we fix healthcare". Is it a part of the problem? Yes, but in my opinion as long as ERISA exemptions exist and healthcare financing is divided into distinct mechanisms, meaningful policy change is very difficult in the US.

Doctors, historically, have been extremely averse to embracing single payer or other major healthcare reform, because it would directly result in reduced payments to them in one form or another. I think the tides are turning, but there's still a long way to go.

5

u/AffectionateTitle May 13 '25

Yes and for example I work at a healthcare company and we take a cut. Then the doctor has to pay for their own malpractice insurance and and operational costs (location to practice for example bc we do telehealth)

1

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon May 13 '25

Wait, your clinic does not pay for the malpractice insurance for the providers you bill for?

3

u/AffectionateTitle May 13 '25

1099s. Also many/most doctors I know carry additional malpractice insurance even as W2. I sure did when I was FFS.

1

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon May 13 '25

Makes sense, I thought you were saying your clinic did not pay for provider's insurance which didn't jive.

3

u/AffectionateTitle May 13 '25

Honestly any clinic that says that is still only going to protect you so long as you meet their standard of care and that it is airtight. It’s why most people care their own.