The bureaucracy is the real cancer
From the link:
As discussed in my last column, I am recovering from a double mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. During this ordeal I have learned a great deal about breast cancer, but even more about America’s health care system — most of it not good.
We have some terrific, caring doctors (and I had some), but the system of accessing appropriate care and paying for it is broken beyond belief.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation promoting high-quality health care, the United States ranks last of 16 industrialized countries on mortality amenable to medical care (medically preventable deaths), yet we spend more than any other industrialized nation on health care.
Where’s all our money going?
Think administration, billing, fragmentation and redundancy. Seven percent of health spending in the United States is wasted on insurance administration alone — a statistic that calls out for a single-payer model. We spend double or triple what other countries do for administration, and the financial incentives in our system reward disaggregated care over efficient coordination.