Guess who's screaming about soaring health care costs now? It's the doctors. That may mean something will be done about them.

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The presidents of the U.S., Michigan and Oakland County Medical Societies visited The Oakland Press recently, and they agreed that the cost of the paperwork associated with the practice of medicine is outrageously high. Later, the state society passed along a hair-raising analysis from the Harvard Medical School of what might be done about it.

As of 2003, nearly one of three socalled health care dollars goes to "administrative waste." The study said, if spent on care itself, an estimated $9,375 a year would be available for every uninsured person in Michigan.

We are, in other words, spending enough to have universal health care, but we don't. Most of the misdirected money goes to pay for what is called medical billing.

The Harvard study estimates the cost at about $400 billion annually, as of 2003. What gives new meaning to the word "ironic" is that it's done in the name of cost control. It would be cheaper to let people steal.

Certainly, there are billing abuses, such as the specialist who charges $250 for stopping by your hospital room to ask you how you're feeling. But it's the "piecework" system that let's his medical biller send that claim to the insurance company.

For their part, doctors will accuse insurers of deliberately delaying payments in order to earn more money by investing the cash. It forces doctors to pay interest on money borrowed in the meantime to pay their costs of doing business.

One could also put under the heading "paperwork problem" the routine duplication of such medical procedures as blood tests. It happens because there is, for all practical purposes, no central electronic patient treatment record instantly accessible to all via a computer, preferably on a hand-held.

The Harvard study also complains that doctors must cope with satisfying the documentation requirements of dozens of insurance companies, each of which may be different. This includes who's eligible to be reimbursed and for what procedures. Continued...

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The Canadian universal-care system participating doctor needs only to check one of 10 boxes on a form, also via hand-held computer. In Canada, there is one payer - the government. While the Harvard report calls for "national health insurance," in this computer age the streamlined system surely could be adapted to a manypayer world.

Hand-held computers also could prompt a doctor when it comes to care given. The New England Journal of Medicine reports we get the treatment the profession recommends only about half the time, such as an aspirin at the fi rst indication of a heart attack.

Here, in 2006, the medical industry in this country is analogous to a century-old general store where bills are calculated with a pencil on a paper sack and the proprietor buys his stock on the basis of hunches about customer requirements rather than facts.

It's so bad that even doctors, those bastions of independence, are, via their professional organizations, expressing real alarm about the status quo.

THE OAKLAND PRESS

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Guess who's screaming about soaring health care costs now? It's the doctors. That may mean something will be done about them.

    Advertisement

The presidents of the U.S., Michigan and Oakland County Medical Societies visited The Oakland Press recently, and they agreed that the cost of the paperwork associated with the practice of medicine is outrageously high. Later, the state society passed along a hair-raising analysis from the Harvard Medical School of what might be done about it.

As of 2003, nearly one of three socalled health care dollars goes to "administrative waste." The study said, if spent on care itself, an estimated $9,375 a year would be available for every uninsured person in Michigan.

We are, in other words, spending enough to have universal health care, but we don't. Most of the misdirected money goes to pay for what is called medical billing.

The Harvard study estimates the cost at about $400 billion annually, as of 2003. What gives new meaning to the word "ironic" is that it's done in the name of cost control. It would be cheaper to let people steal.

Certainly, there are billing abuses, such as the specialist who charges $250 for stopping by your hospital room to ask you how you're feeling. But it's the "piecework" system that let's his medical biller send that claim to the insurance company.

For their part, doctors will accuse insurers of deliberately delaying payments in order to earn more money by investing the cash. It forces doctors to pay interest on money borrowed in the meantime to pay their costs of doing business.

One could also put under the heading "paperwork problem" the routine duplication of such medical procedures as blood tests. It happens because there is, for all practical purposes, no central electronic patient treatment record instantly accessible to all via a computer, preferably on a hand-held.

The Harvard study also complains that doctors must cope with satisfying the documentation requirements of dozens of insurance companies, each of which may be different. This includes who's eligible to be reimbursed and for what procedures.

The Canadian universal-care system participating doctor needs only to check one of 10 boxes on a form, also via hand-held computer. In Canada, there is one payer - the government. While the Harvard report calls for "national health insurance," in this computer age the streamlined system surely could be adapted to a manypayer world.

Hand-held computers also could prompt a doctor when it comes to care given. The New England Journal of Medicine reports we get the treatment the profession recommends only about half the time, such as an aspirin at the fi rst indication of a heart attack.

Here, in 2006, the medical industry in this country is analogous to a century-old general store where bills are calculated with a pencil on a paper sack and the proprietor buys his stock on the basis of hunches about customer requirements rather than facts.

It's so bad that even doctors, those bastions of independence, are, via their professional organizations, expressing real alarm about the status quo.

THE OAKLAND PRESS

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