Per case, the contract doctors are paid ~$100 once (from both per-case and per-hour pay) rather than $800 every month to the applicants. That's still cost-effective. The only reason the numbers seem so large is because there are so few doctors, processing so many applications.
This is similar to the "New York marshals" involved in the debt-collections scheme articles that made the rounds on HN a short time ago. One person makes millions, solely because they have the bureaucratic rubber stamp that makes the grossly unethical business perfectly legal.
If you can put together a good racket, you can usually make a few hundred thousand dollars at it. That's just what sacrificing your own ethics is worth.
But now I wonder how much those docs pay for private security, to protect them from the terminally ill people, denied disability benefits, who may decide to go out with a suicidal attack on someone whom they could see as contributing to their doom.
This is similar to the "New York marshals" involved in the debt-collections scheme articles that made the rounds on HN a short time ago. One person makes millions, solely because they have the bureaucratic rubber stamp that makes the grossly unethical business perfectly legal.
If you can put together a good racket, you can usually make a few hundred thousand dollars at it. That's just what sacrificing your own ethics is worth.
But now I wonder how much those docs pay for private security, to protect them from the terminally ill people, denied disability benefits, who may decide to go out with a suicidal attack on someone whom they could see as contributing to their doom.