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#11
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devil wrote
Infant mortality which is I believe high in the US has a significant contribution to these figures. http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,23..._1_1_1,00.html Infant mortality - Deaths per 1000 live births (year 2000) 3.0 Iceland 3.2 Japan 3.4 Sweden 3.8 Finland 3.8 Norway 3.9 Spain 4.1 Czech Republic 4.4 Germany 4.5 Italy 4.6 France 4.8 Austria 4.8 Belgium 4.9 Switzerland 5.1 Luxembourg 5.1 Netherlands 5.2 Australia 5.3 Denmark 5.3 Canada 5.5 Portugal 5.6 United Kingdom 6.1 Greece 6.2 Ireland 6.9 United States 8.1 Poland 8.6 Slovak Republic |
#12
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In rec.food.cooking Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
It's the other way round. Free market competition keeps cost down and service up. Not always. One of the biggest problems with the private health care system in the states is that the overhead for preparing insurance forms and paperwork is staggering. I just spoke with a tech at a blood lab in my neighborhood and she said they spend hours every day just doing paperwork after the doors close at night. My sister who's a psychologist in private practice also echoed the same concern to me on several occassions, the she spends hours doing insurance paperwork, which could better be spent treating patients. |
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#15
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In article , Go Fig
wrote: It's the other way round. Free market competition keeps cost down and service up. Not always. One of the biggest problems with the private health care system in the states is that the overhead for preparing insurance forms and paperwork is staggering. I just spoke with a tech at a blood lab in my neighborhood and she said they spend hours every day just doing paperwork after the doors close at night. My sister who's a psychologist in private practice also echoed the same concern to me on several occassions, the she spends hours doing insurance paperwork, which could better be spent treating patients. Medicare administrative costs: 2% Average administrative costs of H.M.O.'s 15% New York Times, January 28, 2004, page A 25 (National Edition) Are you saying a doctors billing costs are included in the HMOs overhead ? Did the article compare fraud costs ? Please continue this discussion in an appropriate newsgroup. |
#16
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In article , Pan Ohco
wrote: On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 17:59:18 GMT, (Werner J. Severin) wrote: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1623 * Public Citizen * Physicians for a National Health Program* Jan. 14, 2004 Study Shows National Health Insurance Could Save $286 Billion on Health Care Paperwork: Authors Say Medicare Drug Bill Will Increase Bureaucratic Costs, Reward Insurers and the AARP A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen to be published in Fridayıs International Journal of Health Services finds that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance (NHI) could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States. You actually expect the government to have less bureaucratic cost? Pan Ohco No one said "bureaucratic" cost. They said "paperwork," or perhaps "administrative" cost. Administrative cost in the current system involves separate negotiation between each hospital and each insurance company. Typically, that means pricing at least 400 line items (i.e., CPT (Current Procedural Terms) codes plus drug codes). Individual clinicians usually refuse to negotiate that many times, so they won't take many insurance plans. Also in this are some very hefty profit numbers. Healthcare executives do very, very well in the annual executive compensation surveys. The current system also doesn't do well with the cost, in some cases mandated (e.g., by the federal EMTALA laws that require emergency rooms to take patients), of uninsured patients. That cost gets shifted to the insured and self-pay. |
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