For at least 20 years, the administrative costs associated with health care in the U.S. have been about four times higher than the average for other industrialized countries. You can see how this is possible by looking at Medicare billings. First, the health care provider – doctor, hospital, etc. – bills Medicare. Medicare may pay all, a portion, or none. Then the remainder of the bill goes to the patient's insurer, which may pay some or none. And then the final remainder goes to the patient, all of which can take more than a month, during which time the provider gets little or none of the actual costs (forget the overbilling).
Countries like the Netherlands or Finland, which don't have the resources to support such inefficiency, handle the situation better. The Netherlands uses a single payer system, supported by income tax revenues and administered by insurance firms. Finland has no need of corporate health insurance programs, as everything is handled by the government, leaving corporations to deal with their own business, not the health of others.
The extraordinary inefficiency of the U.S. system has been researched by the likes of the American Medical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in peer reviewed articles.
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