Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein have just published an excellent new analysis of the Senate compromise on health care on the New York Times Blog. The two Harvard researchers and physicians– founders of Physicians for a National Health Program — have been documenting the high cost-low result ratio of American health care for years. They’ve done amazing analyses of how much the American health care system spends — no make that wastes — on administration, profit and marketing. Just one tidbit. In one article they documented that former Harvard Geriatrician John Rowe made something like $223,000 (or was it $221,000) a day as CEO of Aetna. With my poor math skills I tried to convert that into an hourly wage. So if s, abiding by the new insurance version of the Hippocratic oath — First Make More Money — Rowe worked a ten hour day, his hourly pay was $22,300. In just two hours, he made the average salary of a nurse in one year and in seven hours the average pay of a primary care doc. Once you get these figures you understand why we can’t pay nurses and primary care physicians more. The money has been fully committed elsewhere.
At any rate, Himmelstein and Woolhandler have just printed a pithy analysis of what’s wrong with the Senate compromise. Check it out at the following URL
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/medicare-for-50-somethings/