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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Medical billing is ~1/3 of all heathcare costs in the US. That's everything from doctors filling out extra paperwork to advertising and profit for insurance companies. It's not uncommon for close to half the man hours at private practice to be spent on billing related activities, doctors just get paid a lot more.

Quality of care is not the only factor. Medicare spends a lot on end of life care without significant benifit. It's not a question of if there is rationing as we only have finite money, it's a question of what form it takes.

Worse a lot of unnecessary procedures and medication degrade quality of life.

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> Medical billing is ~1/3 of all heathcare costs in the US.

Citation needed. Just looking up health insurance profits ($13B) vs. total healthcare spend ($2T) shows that profit for insurance companies is only 0.65% of the total healthcare spend.

Medical billing would be a cost not a profit center, so I think this may support the idea, not reject it.

This takes a more restrictive view of medical billing and excludes said profits still: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4283267/

"Conclusions:

A simplified financing system in the U.S. could result in cost savings exceeding $350 billion annually, nearly 15% of health care spending."

It also says "Morra and colleagues estimated annual BIR costs in physicians’ practices at $82,975 per physician in the U.S. versus $22,205 in Ontario, Canada [5], i.e., 73% lower."

PS: I would say 100% of the insurance industry excluding doctor payments is medical billing and "Insurance carriers and related activities contributed $450.3 billion, or 2.6 percent, of U.S. gross domestic product in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis." http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/industry-overview

> Citation needed.

Probably traces back to this which is just hospital costs but I think maybe even worse for smaller practices:

A 1999 report found that after exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0% of healthcare expenditures in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_s...

The study:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033

> Just looking up health insurance profits

It wouldn't show up in profits as sibling mentions.

I've seen slightly lower but more recent numbers for hospital admin in the US. Not all of this is 'medical billing' but the majority is (look at the Canadian numbers) and you also have to account for the portion that shows up in the insurer's admin as well (~12% US vs ~3% Canada). There are also substantial admin costs soaked by employers and the subscribers in the US as well although technically not 'medical billing' either.

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