$1.2T in Health Insurance Waste (unemployed, health care, cost, dollar)

[Mike from back east]

Here's why insurance rates keep skyrocketing: annual waste in the health care field is $1.2T out of $2.2T. That's what the auditors at Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) says after studying what insurance firms paid to hospitals. Story at CNN.

Excerpts:

Usually any kind of bill that's under $100,000, they don't look at the details. And that's where something can be paid in error .... For every dollar the nation spends on health care, 50 cents is wasted. ... medical waste includes costs associated with inefficient insurance claims processing, defensive medicine, preventable hospital readmissions, medical errors, and unnecessary emergency room visits.


This confirms what I've often felt, that the slop in the system is enough to pay for the 40M uninsured in this country at no added cost.

[sanrene]

Now, doesn't it make sense to clean up the waste, fraud and abuse in the system BEFORE we have a government take over, where we know all they do is talk about cutting "waste" - they never do anything about it.

[Mike from back east]

Make a lot more sense to do BOTH. We only have millions of unemployed from the ranks of which we could hire tens of thousands of fraud and waste monitors, who essentially pay for themselves.

[workingclasshero]

the problem is not insurance...the 'problem' if you want to call it a problem, is the actual cost of CARE.


get rid of all insurance, since the truth is its a CRUTCH, which PUSHES the costs upward. and make PEOPLE pay their own darn bills....guarentee costs will go down, to levels that people can pay or barter