I'd be interested to see the policy of these countries on lawsuits.
Also, I doubt all of these countries combined have as many people as the US who have so many comorbidities or choose to bounce from hospital to hospital.
I wish there was a country who was even close in population to compare us to.
Quote:U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.
Those lunatic socialists! Don't they know administrators are entitled to suck money out of the system for little to no value?
I think you can tie a large portion of the administrative costs back to legal costs from lawsuits. it may be that they are choosing to "cover their ***" as best they can so when there is a problem they can lay blame on someone else.
(08-25-2009 08:47 AM)STLouis Blazer Wrote: [ -> ]I think you can tie a large portion of the administrative costs back to legal costs from lawsuits. it may be that they are choosing to "cover their ***" as best they can so when there is a problem they can lay blame on someone else.
No, you can tie a large portion of the administrative costs to doctors offices and insurance companies doing business in the stone age. If everyone would computerize and stop having coders and other administrative people entering data on paper and then transferring that into a computer by hand and back and forth, you'd get a TON of efficiencies. A friend of mine develops medical practice software and some of the hoops he has to jump through to interface to insurance companies drives the cost of his software through the roof.
I'll give you that if you had some kind of reform with lawsuits you will take *some* cost out of the system, but the vast majority is just wasted on mindless drones copying billing codes from one sheet of paper to another.
Not to mention the mindless drones searching for some technicality that will allow them to deny the claim.
(08-25-2009 09:35 AM)TMcCarty Wrote: [ -> ]Not to mention the mindless drones searching for some technicality that will allow them to deny the claim.
ding ding ding!
(08-25-2009 09:36 AM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ] (08-25-2009 09:35 AM)TMcCarty Wrote: [ -> ]Not to mention the mindless drones searching for some technicality that will allow them to deny the claim.
ding ding ding!
I don't think the government would be any different. They would just do it on the front-end instead of the back-end.
(08-25-2009 09:33 AM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ] (08-25-2009 08:47 AM)STLouis Blazer Wrote: [ -> ]I think you can tie a large portion of the administrative costs back to legal costs from lawsuits. it may be that they are choosing to "cover their ***" as best they can so when there is a problem they can lay blame on someone else.
No, you can tie a large portion of the administrative costs to doctors offices and insurance companies doing business in the stone age. If everyone would computerize and stop having coders and other administrative people entering data on paper and then transferring that into a computer by hand and back and forth, you'd get a TON of efficiencies. A friend of mine develops medical practice software and some of the hoops he has to jump through to interface to insurance companies drives the cost of his software through the roof.
I'll give you that if you had some kind of reform with lawsuits you will take *some* cost out of the system, but the vast majority is just wasted on mindless drones copying billing codes from one sheet of paper to another.
What do you think 95% of federal employees are? Mindless drones who just process paperwork.
I agree that there are a lot of inefficiencies. If anything, we should push for more efficiency although that will force jobs to be lost but replaced with more skilled workers.
If the plan is to pay for half the $1trillion reform plan by making Medicare/Medicaid more efficient, why don't they go ahead and split that off. That looks like a slam-dunk pass right now, starts saving the country some money, and buys the legislature some time to make sure further reform is done right, not just fast.
(08-25-2009 07:41 AM)mixduptransistor Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.
Those lunatic socialists! Don't they know administrators are entitled to suck money out of the system for little to no value?
I found an interesting little tidbit in a british article about a man who had his appendix "taken out" only to have it rupture inside him 4 weeks later.
"Compensation payments to NHS patients have risen by 20 per cent in the past year to a record high of £769million. At this rate more than £2million a day is being paid over claims against the Health Service."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...k-out.html