"American doctors spend “nearly four times as much per physician as doctors in Ontario dealing with health insurers and payers,” and the additional time and labor drive U.S. per-physician costs to $82,975 annually versus $22,205 in Ontario, a new study published this morning in Health Affairs concludes.
Most of Canada’s savings can be attributed to its single-payer system, one of the study’s authors Dante Morra told me, noting that American physicians have to incur substantial time and staff hours “interacting with multiple insurance plans about claims, coverage, and billing for patient care and prescription drugs.”
In fact, if U.S. physicians had administrative costs similar to those of Ontario physicians, the total savings would be approximately $27.6 billion per year. Just look at the difference in how American and Canadian doctors spend their time:
Link to full post with graphs and charts
By Igor Volsky on Aug 4, 2011 at 9:03 am
$27.6 billion per year.... is certainly a huge amount.
ReplyDeleteIs the American outlining any strategy to deal with this?
Aamer,
ReplyDeleteNot yet. But many Americans remain hopeful that Congress will consider alternatives, like a single payer system, during the upcoming deficit reduction debate. I'll be covering this issue, once Congress begins its deliberations. Thanks for visiting Latte Republic.