Big fat FAIL. Heritage Foundation? Please. Here is the crux of their argument laid out early:
"Medicare patients are by definition elderly, disabled, or patients with end-stage renal disease, and as such have higher average patient care costs, so expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs gives a misleading picture of relative efficiency. Administrative costs are incurred primarily on a fixed or per-beneficiary basis; this approach spreads Medicare's costs over a larger base of patient care cost. Even if Medicare and private insurance had identical levels of administrative efficiency, Medicare would appear to be more efficient merely because of an artifact of the arithmetic of percentages--Medicare's identical administrative costs per person would be divided by a larger number for patient care costs." That is patently false. Administrative costs are higher with non-routine care, which are substantially encurred by older/disabled patients. The insurance industry has metrics based on administrative costs per dollar paid out in claims. There are good reasons for this and the primary reason is that complications of individual claims are washed out over a large enough pool. Higher dollar claims are almost always accompanied by more complex claims which require more administrative oversight. The fact that Medicare has lower administrative rates *in spite of* their primary clientèle is evidence that they are doing something right. This textual effluvium that you link to you is further evidence that you don't understand insurance worth shit. Judah On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 9:42 PM, Gruss Gott<[email protected]> wrote: > >> Judah wrote: >> >> Um, Medicare is more efficient > > Um, according to the data, Medicare is actually NOT more efficient: > > http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2505.cfm > > and since it's CF site we KNOW the data is right. > > Plus there's charts and graphs. And other data-y things. That conclude this: > > "The fact is that, in recent years, Medicare administrative costs per > beneficiary have substantially exceeded those costs for the private > sector, this despite the fact that, as critics note, private insurance > is subject to many expenses not incurred by Medicare. Contrary to the > claims of public plan advocates, moving millions of Americans from > private insurance to a Medicare-like program will result in program > administrative costs that are higher per person and higher, not lower, > for the nation as a whole." > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:302442 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
