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The New York Times this week is reporting on a study that has identified the preponderance of health insurers as the cause of a burdensome bureaucracy that plagues physicians and, in turn, their patients.
The study was published this month in the journal Health Affairs and asked physicians and administrators in the United States and Canada about the amount of time they spend dealing with health insurers over claims, prescriptions, and tests, all of which require different forms and procedures for varying insurers. Canadian doctors spend far less time with insurers and the study attributed this to the fact that the main outlet for payment is a single source: the government. American doctors have to deal with many insurers. The American medical profession spends $80,000 per year per physician to deal with insurers, which is around four times as much as the price for Canadian doctors. We also spend almost ten times as much time on insurers than they do.
Phone calls to insurers is often a huge time drain. Some providers employ individuals specifically to travel from location to location in person because the response to phone calls is often too slow. Large providers outsource the paper work to specialized firms, but small practices cannot afford such overheads. Moreover, providers in a pinch would sometimes prefer to pay for a test or procedure themselves rather than deal with insurers. The constant changes to insurance policy is also a continuing source of frustration to doctors.
The study's authors do not advocate a single-payer system, but they do recommend that the insurance industry colludes to set up certain common sense standards that do not hurt competition.
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