Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (1575)	8/12/2008 9:39:19 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

Computerized systems are capable of handling the paperwork complexity. And ask anyone in billing they will tell you dealing with SS and Medicare is twice has painful as dealing with a private insurance company. Not that private insurance companies don't fight every dime they pay out. But you know what? When was the last time you read about a for profit insurance company being victimized by fraud and abuse? When was the last time you read a story about medicaid that WASN'T about how it is plagued by fraud and abuse?

To: c.hinton who wrote (1575)	8/12/2008 11:09:27 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

if a doctor needs no adminastrative staff his overhead is going to be significantly lower. Considering the value of his time, compared to much lower paid administrative staff, that might not be the case, at least for the first hire. Its a better argument against multiple full time staff members who's job is to fill out forms. I'm not saying that dealing with more insurance organizations doesn't add to complexity and time, but there isn't a very good reason to think that it does so past the point of the benefits received from having multiple sources and competition, and there isn't any reason to think that it would be a major factor in cost savings for the overall health care system. Medicare and Medicaid also require a lot of paperwork. Also most proposed "single payer" systems really aren't single payer, because they would allow private insurance, just provide a basic insurance (most likely from the government) for everyone. Overall allowing private insurance to provide additional coverage is probably a feature not a bug, but it means you still have a large number of private insurers to deal with. And in any case the real issue is standardization of forms and data entry. That's an important enough issue as it goes, but it doesn't require nationalizing health insurance (and even if it did it would be a thin justification for it).