From Time Magazine here: The U.S. Spends $2,500 Per Person on Health Care Administrative Costs. Canada Spends $550. Here's Why Excerpt: Clearly the cost of medical degree influences greatly the price charged by MD-debtors to cover the cost of their education. It must be reduced drastically. From here: The Total Cost To Train A Physician Excerpt:
yep, we should not be required to buy supplemental insurance with Medicare, the Insurance industry played a role in that medicare should cover 100%, with a simple co-pay
Part of the reason is government bureaucracy in the US. Medicare has all sorts of complex special rules about procedures and pricing that make billing for those procedures complicated. It is true that when something is free, it doesn't need to be rationed out as much, and all this accounting for money consumes a lot of resources and, paradoxically, consumes more money. Maybe the solution is to start having government operate their own HMO plans? The traditional typical problem with private sector HMOs is that they are not really inherently incentivized to take care of you, and if you have a lot of expensive health issues and die, your death could save them a lot of money.
