Also, if eliminating waste pays for the health care system Obama wants, then by implication if additional fed money is added to the equation, we could have a Cadillac system for everyone instead of a Chevy. Or is all this just accounting smoke and mirrors?
The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.
The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.
[...]
One example — a paper-based system that discourages sharing of medical records accounts for 6 percent of annual overspending. [...] “The average U.S. hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada,” reads the report, citing dozens of other research papers.“American physicians spend nearly eight hours per week on paperwork and employ 1.66 clerical workers per doctor, far more than in Canada,” it says, quoting a 2003 New England Journal of Medicine paper by Harvard University researcher Dr. Steffie Woolhandler.
The moment the Congresscritters ditch their current gold-plated coverage and sign on as part of Obamacare, I’ll agree to the plan.
After all, if it’s good enough for the millionaire lawmakers, it ought to be good enough for us all.
60 minutes last night was on healthcare fraud. Rank, obvious easy to stop. Fraud by design to funnel money in kickbacks to Congress is one thing, but if the slop over from that is to provide millions to high school drop outs who get a list of patients from a doctors trash to bill for care/items never delivered, well thats “really” bad.
One Medicare recipient has been trying to get Medicare to STOP PAYING for services she never gets for 6 years now. Medicare is required by law to pay claims within 30 days and they don’t have enough field investigators to check out her complaint.
Fraud as a concept really doesn’t cover such situations. Its like some kind of brain infection. A religion: “Church of Wasting Money” if you will.
If you are willing to violate the law for 2-3 months and then make a run for it, anyone can do it.
If he can say “eliminating waste” in regard to politician-designed health care “reform” without cracking up he deserves an Oscar™ too.
It’s proof that the man will say anything. The notion is too bizarre to take seriously.
I hope you can tell when your intelligence is being insulted, but I fear that all too many can’t tell.
Otherwise, how would he even dare to suggest that the Feds will so much as reduce waste let alone eliminate it?
#19 Doctors, clerks and floor mopers do get paid in nationally run health systems. In some places, like Germany, they wish they got paid more, but they aren’t paid in chickens. Germany also pays for medical school, so no huge school loans.
As to the “gov’t too stupid to catch fraud” argument: Catching crimes done by nominally legitimate organizations has been pointedly ignored in this country for decades.
Why has the mafia fallen on hard times? Because the basic unit of modern criminality is the corporation. Not that all corporations are bad, far from it, but if you want to make illegal money and not get caught the easiest way is with a briefcase and not a gun.
This is something the government ought to address, but it is not an essential element of the health debate(merely a related element).
Several key aspects exist in terms of waste in the medical field
1) the overhead of many competing insurers for whom antitrust laws have limited industry consolidation. With consolidation, less administration staff would be required to be paid overall, less money could be directed toward advertising and the risks for each insurer could be spread amongst a greater number of clients
2) differing insurance policies per patient mean that doctors have to work within differing constraints for each patient depending on the policy the patient holds. The doctors must also spend time negotiating coverage with insurers and these factors increase costs
3) Smaller less affiliated hospitals do not have the purchasing power of other larger hospitals and so equipment costs more for them.
4) Procedures of similar types are rarely done at the same time in a “factory” model so higher set up and tear down costs exist per patient
5) Testing is often duplicated when patients seek second opinions or when doctors decide to order testing in their own hospital either because they don’t trust the tester or they are not provided with the test findings.
Some of these problems can be reduced by changes to market regulations, but others cannot and the problem is ultimately that patients, you and I, pay for this inefficiency. The public option has the possibility of solving some of these if the government can operate in a moderately efficient manner.
Here’s an interesting article.
http://tinyurl.com/yhdwspg
I wonder if the opt-out will mean the citizens of those states don’t have to pay for it either.
#25, so we need big corporations running health care, under the guidance of big government,with maybe some big unions thrown in the mix?
Wow, I actually agree with alfred1 on this one. This is a real first for me. Has he started taking his medication?
If there is so much savings to be had from eliminating waste, can we see the numbers from HMOs that have done it? I think most overhead goes towards workers. They will still be needed to deal with insurance companies or billing,whether the records are paper or electronic. You still need workers to pull up the paper or electronic records, and then maybe people to handle computer maintenance.
We need to institute the DEATH PENALTY FOR MEDICARE FRAUD !!! That would put a quick end to it, and a few FRAUDSTERS AS WELL !!!
How is it that our car insurance rates are so low? Are the car insurance companies more humanitarian than the health insurance companies? Are they are not making profits? Do they not have overhead?
Given how many people are about to hit the geriatric stage, why is it that there are so few geriatricians and even fewer doctors that are entering field? It couldn’t possible be because doctors cannot make as much money could it? It couldn’t possibly be because of Medicare could it?
I’ll believe the government will reduce the absolute costs of medical care when I see a blue whale swim by overhead like a dirigible.
The right wing nuts sure like to get their undies in a knot over some things.
First, the 60 Minutes was a hack job. If fraud was so rampant and common place, the auditors would have exposed it years ago. While CBS is exposing some things. it is highly doubtful they are telling the whole story. Whenever you have a lot of money, there will be someone trying to get a piece for it. And there are countless people in Federal Prison right now for Medicare fraud.
Second, everyone knows there is waste in the system. Doctors that have to spend time on the phone with an insurance company to get pre-authorization for a routine or obvious procedure is wasteful. Every doctor’s office that has to hire someone to just collect from the insurance companies is waste.
Third, when doctors refer patients to certain clinics for dubious tests when the doctors owns the facility or gets a kickback for that test.
Fourth, when doctors prescribe some drugs when equal drugs are generic. A good example is “Nexium”, the “Little Purple Pill”. It is just a revamp of “Prilosec” which went off patent. AstraZeneca altered the formula slightly and rolled it out as the patented Nexium at $10 a pill. It does no better than Prilosec and any other acid reducer such as Tagamet.
Fifth, too much of the health care burden is being placed upon Family Physicians. Many, if not most, cases could be seen by a less trained professional such as a Practical Nurse. A PN will write the same prescription for anti-biotics as the doctor will at a fraction the cost and can always refer the patient to a physician for more complicated or serious cases.
#33–Good Morning Fusion==you say “First, the 60 Minutes was a hack job. If fraud was so rampant and common place, the auditors would have exposed it years ago” /// I don’t know when it started by I googled (False billing MediCare 1989) and it was well reported 20 years ago. Nothing has changed except now non-docs are doing it using totally sham addresses.
So easy, almost makes me feel like doing it. False bill for 3 months and leave for South America with a few million in a suitcase. Worth it? Getting rolled in Rio???? Maybe as a swan song.
#34, bobbo,
#34, Bobbo,
#34, Bobbo,
Bobbo,
Bobbo,
Bobbo,
False bill for 3 months and leave for South America with a few million in a suitcase.
You forget that people are:
1) greedy and have a very difficult time leaving a cash cow,
and
2) rarely think they will be caught.
Yes, fraud happens. 60 Minutes seemed to overlook the point that crime happens in all facets of life. Something the size of Medicare, with all its branches and divisions, with a $350 Billion budget, using an honor system, does have people taking advantage of it. The government knows. The FBI knows. The individual States know. The providers know.
And when they are caught, they go to jail. A very difficult job would be to compare Medicare fraud with general fraud in the private sector to see how well each are detected and prosecuted.