Recent report says $800 billion a year wasted in US health care system
A recent report released by Thomson-Reuters indicates that a staggering $800 billion is wasted every year in the U.S. health care system due to inefficiency, fraud, medical mistakes and lack of preventative care.
The report claims that doctors routinely overprescribe antibiotics and order unneccesary tests to protect from malpractice liability, a behavior which accounts for $200 to $300 billion of the wasted funds. Fraud also makes up a substantial portion and accounts for almost $200 billion a year. Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for up to 18 percent of the total.
The report also states that medical mistakes account for $50 to $100 billion of the total. Medical mistakes may not necessarily be classified as medical malpractice but can cost patients and insurance companies substantial amounts of money in treatment that would have been otherwise unnecessary.
The overall conclusions of the report found that U.S. hospitals spend nearly twice as much as comparable Canadian hospitals on administrative costs and demand more time from doctors who spend an average of eight hours each week on paperwork instead of attending to patients.
As medical malpractice attorneys in Indiana, we have also seen several recent articles which have identified "fee for service reimbursement" as a primary motivator underlying this waste. In other words, heath care providers' bottom lines are dependent primarily on how much "medicine" they deliver as opposed to how well the patient does. Thus, much of the identified waste is overutilization which may be rationalized as defensive medicine so as not to question the physician's motivations. True fraud requires dishonest intent. Waste rationalized as "defensive medicine" effectively diminishes or removes any dishonest intent and replaces it with a rational fear of a litigation system run amok.
Continue reading "Recent report says $800 billion a year wasted in US health care system" »
