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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (10093)	10/5/2009 10:51:48 AM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Of course the average age of the beneficiary for Medicare is (WAG) 70 and for private sector (again WAG) 40. So the usage of insurance is probably at least 3X per beneficiary... of course the admin cost would be higher. This, of course, is a case of numbers being manipulated to yield a desired result. You [collectively] do this by stating administrative costs as a percentage, and of course, health care costs for the 65+ crowd forms a much higher percentage base than that for the under-65 categories. So, the percentage figure you and others are so fond of using is not a reliable metric. At all. Of course, it is true there are more claims per beneficiary for aged individuals. HOWEVER, claims isn't a significant portion of the per-patient admin cost for Medicare. Claims processing is the major cost category that varies directly with the number of patients. It totals around $800M/y, or about 4% of the administrative cost burden. An almost insignificant portion of cost per patient. Almost all the major costs of Medicare administration are fixed (and thus more clearly reflected on a per-patient basis) -- with the exception of claims processing, which we already know is insignificant, and collection of the tax (which is handled gratis by the SSA/IRS). Thus, with more patients, the cost per patient should be lower. But it isn't. It is significantly higher than the average private insurance company admin costs, even though private insurance has a plethora of additional overhead (like those massive CEO salaries you people complain about). There is just no rational argument to be made that Medicare admin costs are lower. It simply isn't true.