re: Study reveals a $600 billion savings in administrative costs with Medicare for ALL

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Please tell us more about government making administration of complex industries more efficient

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Lol

Government
+
administration cost
=
no way in frick hell shits getting cut

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nstead we should convert medicare to a subscription based pricing model and give medicare folks $X to shop competing subscription offers and then pocket any savings. This would make cost completely transparent and easy to shop and would in the long run save us all hundreds of billions. Competition lowers cost every time. Today providers simply lobby for more payments from medicare and that raises all our cost.

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THis is an interesting idea. I'm admittingly ignorant on the health care issues. I'm not an idiot, but it's just not something I've spent much time learning more about. I have insurance through my company, have for most of my life and have been pretty darn healthy for the vast majority of my life so it's never raised much interest in me.

I lost my job in 2016, went through major personal hurdles, and very briefly covered by Medicaid. I had a major fall and required 2 surgeries, and was amazed that I didn't pay a dime. That was nice and all, but didn't seem right. Since recovering, I've been employed consistently and have had pretty good health insurance for the last 2 years though I pay $180 month for just myself. But anyway, all this made me start wanting to learn more.

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I go to two doctors that don't accept first time Medicare patients. The only reason I got on their lists was because my wife who is not on Medicare saw them first and I was accepted on her coattails.

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Like I said in my post above, I was unfortunately on Medicare for about 6 months and had 2 surgeries. I have no room to complain about free healthcare, but the only drawback was the very limited providers and the waiting time to see these. I had to get a growth removed in my nasal cavity and I had to have a C-scan, then an MRI, a reading of the MRI and scheduling of surgery, then the actual surgery. Each of these were a month apart and I had to drive and hour and a half to SHreveport.

The level of care was great but it did have a bus station or DMV feel to the clinics and hospital. I was amazed that I was never out of pocket ANYTHING.

Just to add, I'm now back to the workforce and a hard working, tax paying, wage earner that has private healthcare again. This was all during a really dark time of my life and I felt like a parasite being on Medicare.

How do you save what you are not already on the hook for.

I know it’s bad English

So the champions of waste are gonna get more money and waste less?

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Medicare is partially administered by outside agencies

First, other government agencies help administer the Medicare program. The Internal Revenue Service collects the taxes that fund the program; the Social Security Administration helps collect some of the premiums paid by beneficiaries (which are deducted from Social Security checks); the Department of Health and Human Services helps to manage accounting, auditing, and fraud issues and pays for marketing costs, building costs, and more.

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This is fairly obvious but of course you'll get people to argue otherwise. They think we'll save money in total because of admin costs. Even if true, it doesn't make up for the excess demand from shifting 100% of the cost to the tax payer.

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Researchers conclude that this cost discrepancy is primarily the result of bureaucratic hoops US healthcare providers must jump through to fulfill complex billing arrangements

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Which the vast majority of those bureaucratic hoops are the result of policies that originated with CMS.

Had a physical not to long ago, mostly to schedule a blood draw. Spent maybe 5 to ten minutes with the doc. My insurance was billed over $300. The doc didn’t even do anything except chat me up.

I didn’t care as I had zero out of pocket, but why would the insurance companies allow this?

This is such bullshite.

The Federal Govt is the one that imposes this administrative burden on the system by forcing everyone to comply with their mandates.

The cost to implement EMR and track quality metrics to get the maximum Medicare reimbursement alone cost a fortune. This was mandated....among other things...by the ACA.

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The Federal Govt is the one that imposes this administrative burden on the system by forcing everyone to comply with their mandates

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You are correct.