Where Health Care Dollars Go

Here’s an eye-popping statistic — every year in the United States, $210 billion is wasted on medical paperwork. That’s according to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Physicians, clinics and hospitals must deal with hundreds of different health care companies, each offering a multitude of plans. If federal health care reform does nothing but impose a uniform billing system, all those billions could be saved.

Where else are our health care dollars wasted? As an article in the current issue of Newsweek points out, most hospitals are organized by traditional specialties; each department in the hospital operates with its own record keeping and business practices. When Duke University Medical Center set up a disease management system that coordinated the work of primary care physicians, specialists, pharmacists, and other hospital staff, costs were reduced by 40 percent and patient outcomes improved.

The point is that our patchwork healthcare “system,” if it rises to the level of being a “system,” wastes money all kinds of ways. Many pundits and politicians are obsessed with the idea that medical malpractice is the chief cause of rising health care cost. And a recent Congressional Budget Office review concluded that tort reforms would save the federal budget about $54 billion over ten years. Huzzah! yelled the pundits. Problem solved!

But the same CBO analysis also explained that these savings would amount to only about 2 percent of the nation’s health care costs. Further, because most states already have “reformed” tort law, a substantial amount of the $54 billion is already being saved (see page 4).

Comparing $54 billion over ten years with $210 in one year ought to tell us that uniform billing is a much bigger priority than tort reform. But no lobbyists are being paid to push for uniform billing practices, so we don’t hear about it as much. That’s how Washington works.

People suffering from asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma need good health care, and they also need to be able to seek damages in court to get the money they need to take care of themselves and their families. There is no reason to sacrifice the rights of Americans to seek justice in courts in order to lower health care costs.

— Barbara O’Brien

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.