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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: Steve203 🐝 HONORARY
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Number: of 84350 
Subject: Re: The Affordability Tour Kicks Off
Date: 12/18/25 8:03 PM
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There are two categories of workers in the top 25 that appear to be clerical: "medical records specialists" and "other healthcare support workers," but they're fewer than 400K in total, or only a few percentage points of all workers.

Thank you for posting some data. I do not see 43-6013 Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants in that chart. That classification accounts for 749,500 "jobs".

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

29-2072 Medical Records Specialists, on the chart, account for 185,690.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Medical Records Specialists

The chart you linked to totals 12.841M. The BLS' own data shows 17M employed in health care. I do not see 43-6013 Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants on that chart, which accounts for 3/4M. Where are the other 3M+ employees, and what do they do?

There seems to be overmanning somewhere in the US system. The data says per capita concentration of doctors and nurses is about the same in France as in the US. I see nurses picketing, complaining they are overworked and underpaid, regularly, so the US is probably not wildly overstaffed with nurses. Where is the overmanning, and why does it exist?

One thought occurs to me, wrt overmanning and waste. Defense contracts are usually written on a "cost plus" basis, so, the higher the cost, the higher the price. Profit, in dollars, increases with the fixed markup on the rising cost. Is health care working the same way? Overmanning costs are added to the actual cost of treatment, so the dollars of profit increase, while maintaining a "politically acceptable" profit margin?

More data to chew on, using the same site for both the US and France, expressed in staff/1000 population, 2021:

France: Healthcare assistants: 3.71 US: Healthcare assistants: NA

France: Other staff: 6.84 US: Other staff: 21.3

healthsystemsfacts.org - France health system personnel

healthsystemsfacts.org - US health system overview

The US has three time as many "other staff", per 1000 The difference, about 14.36, works out to nearly 5M additional "other staff" in the US system, vs if the US had the same proportion as France. Wonder why the US number for "healthcare assistants" is "n/a"?

Steve

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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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