U.S. Health Care System Wasting Billions, and Other Health Care News
A new report today from Thomson Reuters shows how badly the nation’s health care system is failing working families. The report estimates that more than $500 billion, and maybe as much as $800 billion, is being wasted every year. Health costs in the United States are so high because standard practices are so wasteful. If we can recover savings from that waste, it would far exceed the cost of health care legislation being considered in Congress—legislation that can provide more people with affordable, quality coverage.
Some “highlights” from this unsettling report:
- The average hospital is spending a quarter of its budget on billing and paperwork.
- Tens of billions of dollars a year are wasted because of outdated, paper-based records systems that discourage information sharing.
- Conditions like uncontrolled diabetes that should be avoided through smart preventative care cost tens of billions a year.
- Medical mistakes and unnecessary care cost hundreds of billions a year.
Insurance Industry Report: So Twisted Even Its Author Disowns It
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Turns out the “report” on health care reform, released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is being denounced by the very company that prepared it.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) admits that at the request of AHIP, it cooked up the scariest scenario possible about the cost of health care reform and ignored factors that show health care reform could actually save money.
According to the Politico’s Live Pulse column, PwC released a statement
basically saying, “Hey, we weren’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it.” The statement only seems to reinforce critics’ view that the report is skewed precisely because it doesn’t take into account the totality of reform.
The last, and key, line from the statement: “If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
In other words, PwC is saying if reform’s cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.
Lies, Damned Lies and a Health Insurance Industry Report Condemning Reform
With the prospect of Congress passing health care reform legislation becoming more likely each day, the nation’s health insurance industry has launched a new scare campaign to torpedo reform. Ironically, in doing so, Big Health Insurers also have shown why a public health insurance plan option is vital to real health care reform.
The insurance industry trade lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) just released a report that claims the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform legislation would raise average family premiums to $21,300. The report makes clear that the insurance industry will not lower health care costs on its own. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), called the report
an outrageous threat by one of the richest industries in America….Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return.
Health Insurance Industry Gets the Profits, Patients Get the Shaft
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A wide range of approaches and proposals mark the debate on health care reform. The insurance industry group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has a pretty “simple plan” says Ethan Rome, deputy campaign manager for Health Care for America Now! (HCAN).
They get the profits and we get the shaft.
Rome and some 100 union, health care and community activists, including members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and Working America, rallied outside AHIP’s National Policy Forum at Washington, D.C.’s Ritz-Carlton hotel this morning.
Calling for “real reform and not rhetoric,” the group denounced AHIP’s “astroturf” health care reform campaign orchestrated by private, for-profit health insurance executives that is masquerading as a grassroots initiative.
