Health care is so much bigger than Iraq plus Iraq adds tremendously to the health care burden. It's not even as if we don't have the money. We have the money, it's just wasted, stolen and blown up.
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USA wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured
Main Category: Nursing News
Article Date: 28 May 2004 - 4:00 PDT
The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage.
These results are derived from detailed data on administrative costs in the U.S. and Canada in 1999 which appears in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine. This report updates the New England Journal estimates of nationwide administrative spending and potential savings to 2003. The complex and fragmented payment structure of the U.S. health care system increases administrative overhead in the U.S. relative to Canada, where a single-payer national health insurance program has existed since 1971.
The cost of excess health bureaucracy to the states is equally striking. Massachusetts, with 560,000 uninsured state residents, could save about $8.556 billion in 2003 ($16,453 per uninsured resident of that state) if it streamlined administration to Canadian levels. New Mexico, with 373,000 uninsured, could save $1.500 billion on health bureaucracy ($4,022 per uninsured resident). Maine, home to 132,000 uninsured residents recently passed legislation that seeks to cover the uninsured through a complex system of state subsidies. Unfortunately, the Maine legislation fails to capture the $1.325 billion in potential savings annually ($10,037) on administration that would have been achievable with a single payer reform.
Only a single payer national health insurance system could garner these massive administrative savings, allowing universal coverage without any increase in total health spending. Because incremental reforms necessarily preserve the current fragmented and duplicative payment structure they cannot achieve significant bureaucratic savings....
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