I have worked in health care reimbursement for 15 years, so I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this field.
The government’s primary role is simply to collect money and pay bills, a role that the government can carry out effectively and efficiently.
This line is laughable when it comes to the governments involvement in Health Care in the US. They now administer the Medicare program, and they do alot more than "pay the bills". Congress currently micromanages the Medicare system. They decide what will be paid for and why, and they do this through Congressional bills. The doctors DO NOT decide medical necessity, Congress does. For example, up until a few years ago, a Medicare patient would go into a dr's office because he had been suffering nose bleeds. Medical necessity would indicate a CBC (blood test used to determine anemia among other things), but at that time, Medicare did not consider it a medical necessity so they wouldn't pay for it (this example has been changed in recent years, but it was an example that I always remember). Because of Medicares other rules, if the physician did not tell the patient before hand that it wouldn't be covered, and if they didn't have them sign a waiver, the physician COULD NOT bill the patient for this test. The physician would have to write it off.
Another stat that I see cited over and over again when Universal Health Care is brought up, is the so called "efficiency" of the Medicare system. The stat usually says that Medicare is 85% efficiant in it's paper work (compared to much lower efficiency rates with private insurance companies). The # 1 reason for their high efficiency rate is due to their non - bendable rules. If a claim comes in that is not 100% correct, it is automatically rejected. So it then becomes the physicians responsibility to do the paperwork, refiling etc. They are so efficiant because they don't do anything but either accept or reject a claim. In the cases of other insurance companies, they will actually look at the claim, and based on certain criteria they will pay it without resubmitting it. An example of this would be the CBC mentioned above. If the nosebleed diagnosis was not in Medicares data base as a payable diagnosis, they would reject it automatically. If the nosebleed diagnosis was not in Blue Cross/ Blue Shields database, they would have someone manually look at the claim, hopefully decide that yes, it should be paid for in this situation, and then pay it. All this generally without rejecting it first. They may ask for medical records, etc. But they would try and get it paid, before rejecting it out of hand.
None of this even begins to address the horrendous reimbursement amounts that Medicare pays today, but I may try and address those later.
The government also gets involved in micromanaging our charting procedures, so that we spend less time taking care of patients and more time complying with stupid additions to charting for certain medications called "chemical restraints"... it's a stupid nightmare.