Investing General Discussion

Sanrith Descartes said:

I predict this will make me a sad panda tomorrow at the open when I look at my UNH long.

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Kirun said:

What @Cad is describing about admin costs is actually a massive problem nation-wide, not just in healthcare.

You can start with David Graeber’s 2018 study on "bullshit jobs." Admin jobs in the US have grown over 140% since 1980. His survey work estimated that 30-40% of workers believed their job contributed nothing of real value. Not "I dislike my job," but "my job would not matter if it disappeared." That number has popped up again in research out of the UK, the Netherlands, and the U.S., with some analyses suggesting that in certain industries, over half of administrative roles could vanish with no effect on output.

Universities are the clearest canary: administrative staff have ballooned at up to 6x the rate of enrollment growth, sucking up billions while adding almost nothing to educational quality. Corporate HR, compliance, and "operations strategy" teams are following the same curve. Every new policy requires an analyst. Every analyst requires a supervisor. Every supervisor justifies a coordinator. It's organizational mitosis. Cells dividing because that's what cells do, not because the organism needs it.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimated that roughly one-third of tasks performed in the modern office environment are "non-value-adding." Not low-value, non-value. Pure overhead. Just pseudo-work invented to keep middle-class employment afloat in an economy that offshored nearly all of its physical production.

A large swathe of jobs now are just white-collar sandbags. A giant work program dressed up in ergonomic chairs and corporate jargon. And this is where "AI" comes in. Which actually would be a solution to a lot of the things Cad is bemoaning. But rather than having it help offset healthcare costs like it will and should, these vampires are just going to add it to their bottom lines instead.

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Kithani said:

Even with that 400% markup, hospital makes about 3-6% profit margin… because if their only payer is Medicaid or Medicare then they would go under.

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