Bureaucracy dogs health care: study

[acerbic]

Thirty-one cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States pays administrative costs — nearly double the rate in Canada, according to a new comparison that sees colossal bureaucratic waste in the American system.

RESEARCHERS WHO prepared the comparison said Wednesday that the United States wastes more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

Americans spend $752 more per person per year than Canadians on medical administrative costs alone, according to the study by investigators from Harvard University and the Canadian Institute for Health Information that was published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The team, led by Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard, said a large sum of money might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system.
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/955103.asp

Oh, that horrible, wasteful "socialized" medicine... :eyes:

It's pretty obvious when you just think about it that the U.S. healthcare "system" is burdened with massive bureaucracy, with all the overlapping and competing HMOs and insurance companies and parts of that bureaucracy fighting each other over whether a patient is allowed to get some treatment and for what price... here are some numbers to prove it again.

Are any of the Democratic candidates using data like this to support their positions on healthcare?

[revcarol]

1. Kucinich has been saying this FOREVER...

that we are paying enough for EVERYONE to have health care, but aren't getting it because of administrative costs(including exec salaries and bureaucracy that sits around and decides what things are allowed and denied under YOUR health plan) and exhorbitant profits!!

Watched CNBC today and the health & drug companies are doing STUPENDOUSLY. Now doesn't that make you happy?

And the health care companies and hospital chains have had to pay MILLIONS of $$ in fines for horrible misconduct, $$ that come out of YOUR premiums and DON'T go to provide quality health care. They just up the premiums to take care of this.

[SharonAnn]

3. But the Administrators like their pay, they don't want it cut!

The CEOs and executives need their big paychecks and bonuses - that's where a lot of the "administrative" costs go. They are well aware of it and it's just fine by them.

Typical Republican blood-sucking leeches. They attach themselves to the revenue stream between tax-payers (or rate-payers) and siphon off a percentage of the money flowing through to the actual service providers. This is their plan.

When they can't find a place to attach to, like the public school system, they invent "testing" and develop software to help students prepare for the mandatory "tests". Or the "privatize" the schools. Or they "privatize" many functions for the military like providing food, handling logistics, etc.

What they really like is to take over something that's publicly owned and then attach themselves to the point where the money flows. No start-up costs and unending income. Sweet deal!

[acerbic]

4. Without defending the CEOs and executives in any way,

The CEOs and executives need their big paychecks and bonuses - that's where a lot of the "administrative" costs go.

quite a lot of the administrative costs go to pay the "working class" bureaucrats. Any Democrats willing to make a whole lot of them unemployed by trimming the bureaucratic waste?

[Clete]

2. Steffie Woolhandler has been working on this for a long

time and is my hero. She is the bane of the for profit health industry. I hope she stays out of small planes.

[burr]

5. Good question...

Maybe Wesley Clark should look at this data before running. Single-payer healthcare could be his winning issue.

[MassDem4Life]

6. please remember that

a large portion of that 31% is eaten up in governmental and regulatory compliance, and eveen more in malpractice, and liability insurance premiums.

do you realize that if you are an OB/GYN strating your own practice in the SF bay area, even if you have been an OB/GYN chair for 20 years, your malpractice insurance premiums for the first year are $130,000.00 Thats just the premiums!!! how many babies do you have to deliver, and how many PAP smears doe you have to do to clear that piece of overhead

[Clete]

7. So wouldn't it make sense to have single payer health

insurance? And, maybe wouldn't it be better if the government covered your malpractice insurance? This way they could act as an investigative agent as well. I think this is what they do in Germany, but don't quote me because I don't remember off hand if it's Germany or some other European country that handles it that way.

[burr]

8. Good point...

I've always thought it was stupid that states don't even try to help workers obtain basic health insurance, but when it comes to providing malpractice insurance to drug companies and doctors..our tax dollars are always available!

[acerbic]

9. I doubt that...

a large portion of that 31% is eaten up in governmental and regulatory compliance, and eveen more in malpractice, and liability insurance premiums.

The article doesn't say anything about malpractice and liability insurance, which wouldn't seem to be administrative costs and it says explicitly that the 31% estimate does not even include the advertising costs of drug companies or hospitals or health care industry profits, so it would really be strictly the cost of the bureaucracy, not any "total overhead".