>>> "Until someone presents a nice table of the US medical system with a breakdown of income and expenses, I'll be skeptical of solutions."
I have not seen any sites that give that data, but here's an example of one CEO struggling with the budget:
http://runningahospi...eliberations.html
[...]
"The personnel budget, including benefits, is about $545 million per year. A $20 million savings is thus approximately 4% of this amount. If we were to accomplish this in layoffs alone, we would have to eliminate over 300 jobs. (This is based on an average cost of $80,000 per employee. This number may surprise you, but it is a Âfully-loaded figure, including all benefits, taxes, and the like. Also, this has to be offset by the amount of severance pay for those people laid off.) With 6,200 full-time equivalent employees currently on staff, this would be nearly 5% of the current staff.
But that is on an annual basis: To achieve the same savings in the remaining six months of the fiscal year, we would have to double the number of people laid off, or over 600."
[...]
A long blog article, but it gives some insight into the costs of this type of thing.