Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year

Source: REUTERS

Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.

The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.

"America's healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," the report reads.

"The bad news is that an estimated $700 billion is wasted annually. That's one-third of the nation's healthcare bill," Kelley said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59P0L320091026

But then who's counting.

:sarcasm:

Just you watch.

unnecessary procedures, or malpractice insurance premiums. In short, tort reform did not work. Defensive medicine is not the problem.

Maybe patients and doctors both benefit from the practice of defensive medicine?

Right now, doctors are incentivized to do more medicine, regardless of outcomes. We need to have a system like they have in the UK, in which providers are paid based on demonstrated patient benefit. What some physicians call "defensive medicine" others would call "bringing home the bacon".

It is the number of hospitals owned by selfish groups that are not using 'defensive medicine' to protect from civil litigation (a rather tired myth really). They are ordering all sorts of additional tests and scans and visits to be able to charge the patient for these practices.

Each company has its own computer software to keep track of business
Each company has its own computer forms
Each Company has its own computer experts
Each company has it own computer entry people
Each compnay has its own customer service representatives

Each doctor must decide which company to work with
if they work with more than one that means additional time entering information into forms for that company resulting in even more costs


Back in the mid 90's the founder of Netscape attemmpted to come up with a universal software that would be used by ALL.
Never heard of the attempt did you,,,?
Because the big boys would not let him play in their sand box

The idea was that whatever webapps you were trying to host on your own boxes could be better hosted on theirs, using a scaled-up, one-size-fits-all approach to the underlying services.

It was an early implementation of the same cloud concepts that are all the rage at Google and others currently.

LoudCloud was sold to HP around 2001 or 2002 for a couple billion dollars or so.

the murder of Netscape was 100% premeditated by Microsoft. See the anti-trust suit against MS.

on things like executive pay and bonuses? - The most obvious inefficiency of all in the current "system".

When the first bullet point is "Unnecessary care such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 percent of healthcare waste or $200 to $300 billion a year" there is reason to question the validity of this report. We all know that malpractice lawsuits and the threat of malpractice suits is not that big a cost on the system. TORT reform is not a concern. The second bullet point is fraud in Medicare. We all know the government program is more efficient and less wasteful. That's why we essentially want a properly funded medicare for all.

One can say "well let's just ignore that part"... I prefer not to cherry pick reports.

for profit "health" insurance corporations.

I also found it odd that no dollar figure was put on this statistic although I would imagine it must tie in to demands from dealing with for profit "health" insurance corporations; to me this seemed to be obfuscating their impact on cost.

"American physicians spend nearly eight hours per week on paperwork and employ 1.66 clerical workers per doctor, far more than in Canada," it says, quoting a 2003 New England Journal of Medicine paper by Harvard University researcher Dr. Steffie Woolhandler

Mr. President, I hope you've been briefed on this Reuters report.

this study shows $200-300B in defensive medicine (which is in alignment with the 10% of total medical costs I have seen in other studies).

Most states have caps on noneconomic damages, including Texas. Did insurance rates drop? No. Did defensive medicine stop? No. Defensive medicine is a winger frame used to justify attacks on lawyers. There are many reasons for overutilization, but fear of malpractice is just one of many.

everyone knows the US has the greatest health care system on earth....NO the universe! We have the greatest EVERYTHING in the universe, we are #1 at EVERYTHING. There is no waste, our system is perfect, that article is probably written by a bunch of America hating commies. :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

most hospitals were not -for profit- facilities...

...on the backs of nurses and that you will see major struggle around work speedups of already overworked nurses.