The Price of Paperwork

Inside Health Care | January 26, 2012

Inside Health Care posts feature recent news and blog posts from the health care community and are part of the Center for Advancing Health's portfolio of free, evidence-based coverage of what it takes to find good care and make the most of it.'  By Monica Kriete, CFAH Communications Associate.



Administrative costs for U.S. health care, whether measured in dollars and cents or time, are an ongoing hot topic in health care spending discussions.'  Recently, on the New York Times Economix blog, Uwe Reinhardt asks, "What price do we pay for pluralism in health insurance?" ' He notes that choosing between health insurance plans in countries like Switzerland is relatively easy because each plan is required to offer a federally specified benefits package.'  The diversity of American health insurance plans makes choosing between them more complicated. ' Comparatively, the time that prospective enrollees spend comparing options is astronomical. ' 'Choice in the United States is expensive, because it requires prospective enrollees to do near-Talmudic studies of the fine print of each insurer's offerings ' many times multiple distinct offerings per insurer.'

Dr. Patricia Salber asks a similar question at The Doctor Weighs In: "How much are we paying for 'choice' of insurers?, " citing a recent study that compared the administrative costs of practicing medicine in Canada, a single payer system, with the U.S.'  The researchers found that if U.S. physicians had administrative costs similar to Ontario physicians the total savings would be $27.6 billion per year. ' Why?'  Due to the extra time spent interacting with insurance companies. ' However, Dr. Salber writes, 'The authors are careful to point out that we really don't know the value of the benefits that may be reaped by these insurance company interactions.'  For example, how much inappropriate care is avoided by prior authorizations and how much innovation is stimulated by competition between the various payers?'

At least some of these administrative burdens may decrease starting in 2014, thanks to a new rule proposed by the Obama administration, Julie Rovner reports for NPR's Shots blog. ' This rule could save doctors and hospitals between $3 and $4.5 billion dollars a year by standardizing how insurance companies pay electronic claims and encouraging the use of electronic claims rather than paper ones. ' While the rules may be costly initially for insurance companies to implement, those costs will be more than made up in savings over the next ten years, according to administration officials.

 

' 

Related Links:

• What's the Price on That MRI? Patients and the Price of Health Care ' Jessie Gruman


• Health Reform Loopholes ' Trudy Lieberman


• Price Tags and Haggling in an Exotic Market ' Daniela Carusi


• Health Insurance, Meet the Jolly Green Giant' Trudy Lieberman

 

More Blog Posts by Inside Health Care

Inside Health Care posts feature recent news and blog posts from the health care community and are part of the Center for Advancing Health’s portfolio of free, evidence-based coverage of what it takes to find good care and make the most of it.

Tags for this article:
Health Care Cost   Pay for your Health Care   Inside Healthcare  

Comments on this post
Please note: CFAH reserves the right to moderate all comments posted to the Prepared Patient Blog. Any inappropriate postings will be removed.

No comments have been entered yet.

Add Your Comment

Your name
Your Comment Characters left:
Enter text shown in picture

BROWSE BY: AUTHOR  |  TOPIC  |  MOST POPULAR

CER Interviews Engagement Interviews Health Expert Interviews All Jessie Gruman Blogs Jessie Gruman Biography

	Those Confusing EOBs…Once Again! Trudy Lieberman | February 27, 2013
	Buying Health Care from a Boutique Trudy Lieberman | February 20, 2013
	Getting Your Operation at a Cut-Rate Surgery Center Trudy Lieberman | January 29, 2013
	Does the U.S. Get Value for Its Health Care Dollars? Trudy Lieberman | January 23, 2013

More Prepared Patient Blogs

	How Much Will Your Health Care Cost?
	What Are Medicare and Medicaid?
	Paying for Prescription Medications

More Be a Prepared Patient Resources