One Reason U.S. Health Care Costs So Much
14th April 2010
The takeaway: For every doctor, there are five people performing health care administrative support.
There are two basic reasons for the absurdly large administrative employment in health care. First, our health care system — with its actuarially focused multiple health insurers, paper-based record keeping and multiple billing systems — is bound to create a lot of administrative work. Second, the way the payment system is structured, there is little incentive to make the system more efficient.
And how much of that administrative burden is because of government paperwork requirements? Can you spell M E D I C A R E? Can you spell M E D I C A I D? Can you spell T A X D E D U C T I B I L I T Y? Of course you can.