If you’re a physician, chances are you’re not the one making out from all the money going into medical care. Only eight percent of the total yearly healthcare costs in the U.S. go to pay physicians, according to Jackson Healthcare, an Atlanta-based healthcare staffing and technology company.
Using the most recent statistics on the number of practicing physicians in the U.S. from the American Medical Association, and salary figures from Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), physician salaries total $216 billion, or 8.6 percent of total U.S. healthcare costs, according to MGMA. The MGMA statistics were obtained from a 2010 report using 2009 data.
“At eight percent of total healthcare costs, if physicians worked for free we would still have a serious cost problem,” said Richard Jackson, chairman and chief executive officer of Jackson Healthcare, in a press release. “What this figure shows is that physician pay is not the primary contributor to healthcare costs.”
Many physicians worry that their income will decrease even more if the U.S. winds up going to a national healthcare system like Canada. However, on the basis of the Canadian experience under national health insurance, average physician incomes have changed very little, according to Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP). But income disparities between specialties is likely to shrink, according to PNHP.
It’s estimated that overall U.S. healthcare spending in 2009 was $2.5 trillion, according to the most recent estimate from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
CMS reports that only $505 billion of that money went to doctors. According to data from MGMA, physician compensation accounts for 37 percent of total collections, or $186B. MGMA found that physicians did not see more money because their earnings were outpaced by inflation.
In fact, the study found that primary care compensation increased a measly 2.04 percent to $186,044 in 2009, an inflation-adjusted decrease of 1.73 percent. Specialty care physicians’ pay performed only slightly better, with an overall increase of 2.19 percent to $339,751, a 1.59 percent decrease when adjusted for inflation. The only specialities to see increases of more than 10 percent in the last five years were anesthesiology and pulmonary medicine, according to the study.
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Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
