The Staggering Costs of Health Insurance “Sludge” | Stanford Graduate School of Business

The Staggering Costs of Health Insurance “Sludge” | Stanford Graduate School of Business: A new study finds that dealing with health insurance administrators costs the U.S. economy billions in wasted work time and lost productivity. Comment by Don McCanne So finally someone has discovered that private insurance companies not only waste a tremendous amount of health care funds on administrative excesses, but they also place a tremendous administrative burden on others - the health care delivery system, the business community and the employees insured by these firms. Professor Pfeffer says that he can't believe that no one looked at the employee burden before, but, of course, they have. More astonishing is the fact that Pfeffer says that the fault lies less with the insurance companies and more with the companies that purchase the private insurance plans and then fail to hold the insurers accountable. Accountable? Accountable for what? The insurance companies are private businesses rather than public service organizations. They strive for business success by erecting barriers to spending money on health care. They spend a large amount of funds on accomplishing this - not only on their own administrative services that are designed to cut back on health care spending, but also by creating administrative burdens for the health care delivery system, and businesses and their employees. That's just good business. If they want efficient public service organizations whose job it is to assist patients in getting the care they need, they should advocate for a single payer Medicare for All program and then dismiss the private insurers and their inefficiency at obtaining beneficial health services. But then isn't it characteristic of market-oriented business schools like Stanford to place the blame on the consumers? We should be assisting the consumers of health care, not blaming them.