My wife penned the following letter to the editor and submitted it to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this past Saturday. I believe that you will find her presentation compelling.
Karen Wolk Feinstein, President and CEO of the Jewish Health Care Foundation, noted to a group of experts attending a day-long meeting at the foundation's training center on Thursday that "40 cents of every health care dollar spent is wasted on preventable complications, unnecessary treatment, errors and general inefficiencies". ("What's on the horizon in health care?" October 19) According to the Institute of Medicine the estimated total annual waste is $765 billion. The National Academy of Sciences breaks this down as follows: fraud and inadequate prevention, 17%; unnecessary treatment, 28%; unnecessary high prices, 14%; inefficiently delivered services due to lack of coordination among doctors, hospitals, and other providers, 14%; and, excess administrative costs as a result of too many private insurance companies and types of insurance, 25%. The elephant in the room that no one wants to mention is that last 25% of wasted money caused by our current health insurance system. That is $191 billion per year. Perhaps political contributions, charitable donations, and advertising revenue keep us from pointing to the elephant.
In contrast, Medicare, our national single payer system of publicly financed, privately delivered health care, has administrative overhead of less than 5%. Pennsylvania has its own single payer solution, the Family and Busniness Health Security Act, SB 400/ HB 2551. When we adopt this, presto, the elephant vanishes.
Tirzah Mason
Trafford, PA
HEALTHCARE 4 ALL PA-PUSH - Southwestern PA chapter of Healthcare 4 all PA
Excellent letter Tizrah & Bob. I refer you all to the tab at the top of the page titled "Real Reasons for High Medical Costs" for even more analysis of what is driving up the costs here in the US but resulting in even worse outcomes.
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