Posted on 06/12/2009 2:24:50 AM PDT by neverdem
The same government boobs that have given us the Space Shuttle, public housing slums, oversight and massive regulation of banks, prudent budgests, 22% graduation rates in urban skools, ethanol will now finish off medicine.
The notion that a government take over of health care will somehow reduce paperwork seems manifestly counterintuitive.
You do have a gift for understatement don’t you! ;>)
They would have similar costs if they had to collect from each patient-maybe more.
You either ignore or are unaware that medical concerns also have to collect from each patient as well as from insurers due to co-pays and deductables. There is no foregone expense involved as you seem to believe.
Not even close.
They’ll be studies that say other wise.
/sarc.
That’s the great thing about a study. It finds that whatever the sponsor wants to be true, is true.
There is a huge difference in collecting $100 and collecting thousands of dollars for a procedure.
If we each had to pay full price for every procedure, we would be spending a lot more time discussing the alternatives to care with our doctors as well as negotiating price and payment terms. These things take time for doctors as well as all professionals.
My wife just had a procedure which cost 14k. If that were coming from our pocket directly we would have gotten several quotes from several doctors and had looked seriously at lesser cost alternatives. If we then decided that it was necessary we would have then spent more time discussing payment terms.
There is an economic cost to these things regardless of whomever does them.
Remember, for better accuracy, multiply all federal projections by a factor of 3.
When the Pay Czar tires of tormenting corporate executives, he focus his attention on the huge pool of doctors. The only protected group will be the trial lawyers.
What you say is very true. Unfortunately for your logic the process you describe is called competition and rational choice between alternatives, and these process tend to lower costs, not raise them. Costs tend to rise when the decision making process is divorced from and insulated from the direct economic consequences. And these costs are not just the direct ones. Everyone suffers because scarce resources are allocated to less than their best use.
I’d like to recommend a book to you called “Knowledge and Decisions” by Thomas Sowell. I think you would find it a very interesting read.
These numbers are far too low. The doctors themselves may only spend three hours a week working on insurers’ admin tasks, but in fact their actual cost is much higher because most of them have to employ people full time to deal with these matters. Staff must continually attend trainings just in order to fill out the paperwork in a manner that will get the claims approved. The staff members’ salaries + benefits far exceed the numbers set out on these charts.
Then that would be Comrade Obama’s ‘Doctor’s Plot’.
The notion that a government take over of health care will somehow reduce paperwork seems manifestly counter-intuitive.
Very well stated. Unfortunately, the typical Obama-voter will have no idea what you are stating.
I have choice now. I am self employed and my health cost bill is about 20k per year. I can self insure and I do to a certain extent.
My current insurance company is able to negotiate great rates with our doctors, take care of a lot of the paper work for me and they provide payment plans (premiums) which smooth out my costs.
I have had companies before which refused to pay some of my doctors a good price and they in turn refused to do business with my insurance company. I in turn switched companies.
I have had doctors (like orthodontists) where we have spent a fair amount of time discussing his rates and his payment plans. Every month his office needs to send me a bill and every month we need to pay it. I imagine if I did not pay it, the office staff would have to get the doctor involved. I also imagine the doctor has to take time reviewing his various accounts.
You may argue that these costs in this study are too high but the alternatives have administrative costs as well and its not clear to me that they would otherwise be lower and they certainly would not be nonexistent like this study tries to imply.
I spend very little time with private insurance. It is the Medicare paper work that is really a burden. All those forms for everything from oxygen,shoes,insulin and supplies. And let us not forget the FMLA papers. The government rules and regulations are a much bigger burden. Now they are trying to force e-RX’s that take twice the time as hand written ones. I rarely interact with private insurance.
Not. Collecting cash is much easier. Lets go back to 1970’s when the patient payed cash and the patient had the responsibility of the insurance paper work to collect their money. It was the patients responsibility to do their own paper work as the contract was between the patient and the insurance company. Now physicians have to HIRE employees at a hugh expense to file all the insurance claims. That is expensive.
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