deadheadskier wrote:The adminstrative costs are astronomical at hospitals in terms of managing a multi vendor insurance system. It was only in recent years that coding for medical billing was standardized and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of a hospital bills expenses are devoted to administrative costs, not the actual care. Standardizing price of care and payment reduces this to a fraction of the cost. Even if the government screws up and can only reduce that by 10%, you're still talking massive savings over the course of a population.
A common misconception I might add when discussing single payer healthcare and free public universities is that people in favor of it are looking for handouts. Not true. I and most people I know who want this system are well educated professionals with great company benefits. We all put ourselves through school. We all save for our kids college education. I also work in medical technology and there's a good chance single payer will hurt my own compensation. This isn't about me. Not about freebies and handouts. Both are about economic improvement nationally. Reducing costs and building a healthier and more productive workforce is what this is all about.
There are many industries where private industry is the way to go. Healthcare is not one of them. Americans are getting ripped off. The numbers don't lie
You have more faith in the ability of government to manage things than I do. I've worked with government energy regulators for over 30 years, at both the state and federal level, and I've seen too many examples of screw ups to give me any confidence that government can run something as far flung and as important as medical insurance. We've all seen the cost overruns in government run systems, the lack of bureaucratic responsiveness, and all the other issues that are in the news regularly. I see no reason to think that the government, with antiquated computer systems and a total inability to run most anything efficiently, could save on medical care over time.
The amount of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid is staggering, with the government's own estimates as high as $50 billion per year, at last from what I've read in the past. (Maybe it's better today; who knows?) Those who cite the administrative cost of Medicare at 3% and compare it to the administrative cost of private insurance at 10 - 12% don't include the cost of fraud. Granted, fraud is a problem with private insurance as well but nowhere near the level of fraud in Medicare, et. al. Part of the administrative cost of a hospital is, I'm sure, working with private insurance as the insurers try to identify fraud on the input side, not after the fact like the government. So, if the hospital administrative cost goes down, as you suggest it would, but the amount of fraud in the system goes up, all we've done is shift costs from the hospitals to the government, i.e. the American taxpayer.
If you're willing to trust the government to run something as critical as healthcare, so be it. For me to have that confidence, however, requires me to suspend disbelief.