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Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

med.stanford.edu

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Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#51

Post by triceratops »

238475235243 wrote: post #40
DonnyV wrote: post #29

Worthless paper, administrative costs is only a piece of the many issues with US "Healthcare". Medicare For All is the better and cheaper way forward. No one ever talks about what is the value all these Health Insurance companies bring? The whole point of their existence when they were created was to control costs. Obviously they have failed miserably. Medicare For All handles lowering or eliminating student loans fo…

Or we could make it legal to open hospitals, or charge differential pricing based on the time of day... you know, basic stuff? Most people have no idea how captured healthcare is. There's no competition, indeed most healthcare is government granted monopolies already. Having lived in countries with "free" healthcare, that isn't all it's cracked up to be either. A good example of cost cutting: just make the disease il…

The rest of your post I agree with but

> just make the disease illegal, like ADHD in the UK

What in the world are you talking about?[1]

1. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/attention-deficit-hyperactivit...

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#52

Post by CarlosEscobedo »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #43

What a joke. The only thing that would lower the costs would be to increase the competition, but the government has allowed merger after merger after merger (in health insurance, and in providers, just like everything else lately), taking away more and more pressure to compete. Why is every other ad on TV for one of the car insurance companies? Competition, which drives down price. The way to fix US health care is to…

i think the main difference is if i have car insurance A and get into an accident they send me to body shop A, or at worst i go to body shop and send insurance the bill. If i need to see one of the 15 dentist in my area and there 100s of dental insurances there is no guarantee they take my insurance. When i switched dental insurance to another big regional one, my current dentist didn't accept that insurance, so now im paying out of pocket or finding a new dentist.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#53

Post by podgaj »

jostmey wrote: post #2

I 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 the cost of medical school. That cost is linked to the colleges raising prices because they can.

Medicare for All will surely help this, but free college will help as well.

The U.S. is like a dysfunctional family where the parents will not pay for the kids college even though they have the money.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#54

Post by podgaj »

creaghpatr wrote: post #11
taurath wrote: post #6

Can anyone grok what the actual proposed reforms are? It’s missing from the article.

Looks like it's mostly an abstract of something that was published in a journal but they hint at it saying 3 scenarios: simplifying/streamlining individual plans, standardizing plans across all groups ie. more standardization, and a combination of those two things. This would lead to less complexity and administrative overhead which would lead to savings etc.

>simplifying/streamlining individual plans, standardizing plans across all groups ie. more standardization, and a combination of those two things

It's the factory system, but for health care!

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#55

Post by podgaj »

whiddershins wrote: post #30
whowe1 wrote: post #18

So how do they plan on getting private capitalist enterprise to start implementing reforms that would lower their profits? Because by definition administrative cost to the consumer is profit for the company.

By making it possible for them to compete to the consumer on price versus quality?

Why is this not happening now? Because they hide the prices on purpose.

And when I am having a manic episode it is kind of hard for me to search for the cheapest hospital to have myself involuntarily committed.

There are just some thing capitalism really sucks at, just admit it.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#56

Post by dantheman »

whowe1 wrote: post #18

So how do they plan on getting private capitalist enterprise to start implementing reforms that would lower their profits? Because by definition administrative cost to the consumer is profit for the company.

Let more people compete? Remove restrictions and anti-competitive laws?

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#57

Post by dantheman »

podgaj wrote: post #55
whiddershins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making it possible for them to compete to the consumer on price versus quality?

Why is this not happening now? Because they hide the prices on purpose. And when I am having a manic episode it is kind of hard for me to search for the cheapest hospital to have myself involuntarily committed. There are just some thing capitalism really sucks at, just admit it.

Emergency care is a tiny portion of all healthcare costs.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#58

Post by alistairSH »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #33
rscho wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world Rest of the world, yes. Rest of the developed world, not at all. The major difference is that becoming a doc in the US is much more expensive than pretty much anywhere else. You could also argue it's proportionally harder because of the more numerous competitors. But on an absolute level of knowledge…

It really is harder in the US. The standards are much higher in the US than anywhere else. The US only accepts doctors who went to Canadian or American medical schools. And then on top of that, it is much harder to get into a medical school here in NA than practically anywhere else, except maybe India. I know that in the UK you can go directly from high school, meanwhile in the US & Canada you need a 515 MCAT, 3.7 GP…

The US only accepts doctors who went to Canadian or American medical schools.

That's absolutely not true. Foreign medical graduates do have to take the US board exams, complete a US-based residency, and possibly take additional courses to fill educational gaps, but they absolutely can practice in the US with a foreign medical degree.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#59

Post by not2b »

I'm skeptical, because a key element of the US payment system is that everyone is highly motivated to shift costs to someone else, to be paid more money and to pay out less money, so doctors hire armies of accountants to do battle with similar armies deployed by insurance companies, hospitals, and drug companies. How will they fix that?

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#60

Post by trentnix »

DonnyV wrote: post #29

Worthless paper, administrative costs is only a piece of the many issues with US "Healthcare". Medicare For All is the better and cheaper way forward. No one ever talks about what is the value all these Health Insurance companies bring? The whole point of their existence when they were created was to control costs. Obviously they have failed miserably. Medicare For All handles lowering or eliminating student loans fo…

> Worthless paper, administrative costs is only a piece of the many issues with US "Healthcare". Medicare For All is the better and cheaper way forward.

As frustrating and arcane as the current system may be, the government fully in charge for the provisioning (rationing) and financing will only increase 'worthless paper, administrative costs'.

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