Much as we’d love to think that it’s all insurance company profits and outrageously priced “me too” drugs, the main reason that American health care costs so much is the number of procedures we do, and the price of those procedures. And health-care labor is a huge portion of those costs. For example, it makes up about half of hospital costs, despite the fact that hospitals are enormous buildings containing an awful lot of high-tech equipment and pricey medicines.
It's theoretically possible that we could demand that all those folks take a pay cut. But so far, as the Official Blog Spouse chronicles, the U.S. political system hasn't even been able to get doctors to take a cut in their Medicare reimbursements, much less their whole incomes. Here's the basic electoral math: If you try to cut the incomes of doctors, nurses, radiology techs, phlebotomists, etc., voters may be glad of the price break, but I'd be surprised if 1 percent would go to the polls and vote for you because you're the guy who cut doctor reimbursements by 17 percent. On the other hand, 100 percent of the doctors, nurses, radiology techs and phlebotomists will storm the voting places and make sure that they cast their vote against the jerk who wants to cut their incomes and, oh, by the way, destroy American health care.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-02-25/cut-health-costs-or-help-workers-you-can-t-do-both
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-04-30/single-payer-would-make-health-care-worse
