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Huge Administrative Waste Makes Clear For-Profit Insurance Is 'Actually Very Bad': Analysis (www.commondreams.org)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Compare the health care spending per capita of industrialized countries:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/

The US spends $12,555 per capita (per 2022). To bring us in line with other industrialized countries, we would need to cut that number in half.

Compare to the number cited in the article:

To get your head around why this is, think for a second about what happens to every $100 you give to a private insurance company. According to the most exhaustive study on this question in the U.S.—the CBO single-payer study from 2020—the first thing that happens is that $16 of those dollars are taken by the insurance company. From there, the insurer gives the remaining $84 to a hospital to reimburse them for services. That hospital then takes another $15.96 (19% of its revenue) for administration, meaning that only $68.04 of the original $100 actually goes to providing care.

In a single-payer system, the path of that $100 looks a lot different. Rather than take $16 for insurance administration, the public insurer would only take $1.60. And rather than take $15.96 of the remaining money for hospital administration, the hospital would only take $11.80 (12% of its revenue), meaning that $86.60 of the original $100 actually goes to providing care.

Administration overhead fixes wouldn't quite get all of the difference, but it is a huge chunk of it. That on top of Medicare being able to negotiate better rates would likely do the rest.

So, yeah, do universal Medicare. That alone takes care of almost the entire problem.