Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
1–10 of 221 posts
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#2I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Likewise, manufacturers of medical supplies operate as monopolies because the moat to reach approval is really high. I fear the US medical system is becoming so insane the only fix will be to replace it entirely (It's not just about tearing down, but replacing institutions)
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#3I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…
The bottleneck is not the number of people with an MD. The bottleneck is the number of residency programs. These are funded by Medicare and I believe they are not profitable for hospitals.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#4Recently I got laser eye surgery to help my vision. This was not covered by my insurance. It also happened to be the simplest medical procedure/payment I ever had to interact with. They told me "this procedure will cost $X.XX and we have a discount we can offer you that will save you X%" I said okay and paid them the money.
Compare that to insurance being involved recently in my wife's diabetes supplies. My wife is a type 1 diabetic and needs supplies that monitor her blood sugar, we noticed her supplies didn't arrive on the scheduled date, we waited a week to see if they would show up and they didn't. My wife called the company that was supposed to send them, they said our account was in collections? Why, we never received a bill, we never were notified, but in collections we were. We eneded up paying and got that sorted out and waited another week, still no supplies. I'll cut it short and just say it took us 3 weeks being on the phone multiple times a day being bounced around between our insurance, the supplier and her dr, to finally get told we couldn't get the supplies because my wife had gotten a new phone and so the insurance company didn't have enough data to prove that she needed these supplies, and wouldn't reauthorize them. The drama is still ongoing.
Let's get this straight a huge part of the healthcare costs are directly related to insurance and the money and laws tied up in that. We need to get rid of insurance, and the way it works if we honestly want to make any change. Any other effort will only further entrench the confusopoly.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#5I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…
Agreed.
Entrenched institutions are the general problem with America. It's the police unions protecting bad policing, the restricting of doctor supply via the residency bottleneck, and local governments preventing new building for burgeoning populations.
They're all the same problem really. Beneficial to the incumbent group at the expense of those they service. It's kind of amazing.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#6Can anyone grok what the actual proposed reforms are? It’s missing from the article.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#7I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…
The bottleneck is not the number of people with an MD. The bottleneck is the number of residency programs. These are funded by Medicare and I believe they are not profitable for hospitals.
There's some good reason to think that residencies are profitable: in 2019, 550 of them were auctioned off for $55 million in a controversial bankruptcy case.
https://www.inquirer.com/business/hahnemann-university-hospi...
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#8I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…
Agreed. Entrenched institutions are the general problem with America. It's the police unions protecting bad policing, the restricting of doctor supply via the residency bottleneck, and local governments preventing new building for burgeoning populations. They're all the same problem really. Beneficial to the incumbent group at the expense of those they service. It's kind of amazing.
Institutional trust is certainly a huge problem right now.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#9Recently I got laser eye surgery to help my vision. This was not covered by my insurance. It also happened to be the simplest medical procedure/payment I ever had to interact with. They told me "this procedure will cost $X.XX and we have a discount we can offer you that will save you X%" I said okay and paid them the money. Compare that to insurance being involved recently in my wife's diabetes supplies. My wife is a…
I have had some private pay medical treatment and can concur. Come in, write the check/present the card, and walk out. Fortunately it wasn't very expensive.
Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care
#10Recently I got laser eye surgery to help my vision. This was not covered by my insurance. It also happened to be the simplest medical procedure/payment I ever had to interact with. They told me "this procedure will cost $X.XX and we have a discount we can offer you that will save you X%" I said okay and paid them the money. Compare that to insurance being involved recently in my wife's diabetes supplies. My wife is a…
Sorry to hear about your ongoing issues. Sadly, it's the same story thousands of times per day, often for people experiencing the final moments of their lives.
The healthcare insurance industry absolutely needs to be destroyed.
One day, we'll look back at this debacle similar to cigarettes, big industry manipulating the population and millions of people dying unnecessarily because of it.
It's time to end the suffering.