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We spend even more money on healthcare administration than what’s directly spent on it. HR departments screwing around with insurance. Various government benefi

We spend even more money on healthcare administration than what’s directly spent on it. HR departments screwing around with insurance. Various government benefits & other agencies having to mess with private health insurance issues. Attorneys general offices and state rep offices spending time to get insurers’ and hospital billing departments’ heads out of their asses (they do a lot of this). There are also untold hours lost in unpaid labor on the part of “clients” messing with insurance and hospital billing departments. It’s not uncommon for someone who is, or is connected to a person who is, seriously sick for even a few days to spend a work-week or more of time that year messing with the billing from the incident. This can include uneventful pregnancies and births.

eszed 2y ago
The amount of wasteful overhead in the American "healthcare" system never fails to shock me. The last two companies I've worked for (one a self-insured non-profit, the current a "conventionally"-insured for-profit) have both, coincidentally, had ~500 employees, and each dedicated about one-and-a-half full-time positions to administering their healthcare plans. Now scale that up across every company in the country: it's... Insane. Forget any of the squishy humanitarian impulses behind "socializing" medicine; eliminating all that un-productive labor would be of immense economic benefit. (Health-plan administrative cost is a moat which advantages large businesses to the detriment of small. That goes some way to explaining why an economic-efficiency / dynamism argument has never gained traction in American political discourse.)
- vundercind 2y ago
  Right, it’s so bad that if we Did A Socialism and somehow had the worst cost outcome for such a move on the planet such that our direct healthcare spending remained identical(ly crazy-high)… it’d still be a win because of the huge drag on the rest of the economy and our QOL the current system imposes in indirect costs.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    But that would be morally wrong and lead to communism and satan worshipping.
    - lstodd 2y ago
      You shall not split. Lenin still lies in his mausolem awaiting a kiss.
rsynnott 2y ago
One thing I’ve noticed from American colleagues talking about healthcare stuff (insurance and copays and vouchers and HSAs and so on and so forth) is that it’s just mind-numbingly complex. It just seems like an incredible mess. Like, the amount of mental energy that goes into it just from the users has to be a significant cost to society.

eszed 2y ago

The amount of wasteful overhead in the American "healthcare" system never fails to shock me. The last two companies I've worked for (one a self-insured non-profit, the current a "conventionally"-insured for-profit) have both, coincidentally, had ~500 employees, and each dedicated about one-and-a-half full-time positions to administering their healthcare plans. Now scale that up across every company in the country: it's... Insane. Forget any of the squishy humanitarian impulses behind "socializing" medicine; eliminating all that un-productive labor would be of immense economic benefit. (Health-plan administrative cost is a moat which advantages large businesses to the detriment of small. That goes some way to explaining why an economic-efficiency / dynamism argument has never gained traction in American political discourse.)

vundercind 2y ago
Right, it’s so bad that if we Did A Socialism and somehow had the worst cost outcome for such a move on the planet such that our direct healthcare spending remained identical(ly crazy-high)… it’d still be a win because of the huge drag on the rest of the economy and our QOL the current system imposes in indirect costs.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  But that would be morally wrong and lead to communism and satan worshipping.
  - lstodd 2y ago
    You shall not split. Lenin still lies in his mausolem awaiting a kiss.

rsynnott 2y ago

One thing I’ve noticed from American colleagues talking about healthcare stuff (insurance and copays and vouchers and HSAs and so on and so forth) is that it’s just mind-numbingly complex. It just seems like an incredible mess. Like, the amount of mental energy that goes into it just from the users has to be a significant cost to society.