The "huge amount of money spent on administrative salaries" occurs in the private insurance sector. Medicare operates at 3% administrative costs.
85% of our patients are Medicare, 15% are private insurance. For that 15%, we are burdened by having to accept 41 different insurance plans.
For that 15% we are forced to pay 7% of our revenue, for a billing company to do our billing.
For that 15% we have to hire a person at 35000 to deal with the requirements of 41 different insurance plans.
That 15% of our patients costs us 100,000.00 annually.
People want to complain that medicare is costly, I look at it this way: the for-profit insurers get the patients from age 0 to 65; at 65, just when the actuarial tables show they are most likely to have chronic and expensive medical needs, they are turfed to medicare. By definition Medicare provides for the sickest population demographic. This is a great gig for the insurance companies.
It's like saying, I'll provide you a car warranty for the first 60,000 miles, after that the government has to insure you. But the government is not allowed to insure you from zero miles.
If the interests interest of the insurance industry were the same as the physician's, why aren't physician reimbursements rising in proportion to the rise in insurance rates, or insurance CEO salaries?
