Cross posted at americanpatientsunited.org
The AP is reporting that the American Medical Association today released a report card on the health insurance industry. The primary focus is on the how quickly and accurately doctors get paid but it does have some interesting data that might be useful for patients. It would be interesting to see if the same health insurers that are slow to pay providers are also slow to pay patient claims. The takeaway is that even the AMA admits single payer is the best way to go.
The report card compares Medicare and seven national commercial health insurers on the timeliness and accuracy of claims processing. It is based on a random sample drawn from 3 million claims.
There are no grades like A, B and C, and many of the technical measures may not mean much to most patients. But business leaders and health policy makers are interested in cutting an estimated annual $210 billion in wasted administrative claims processing costs, AMA leaders said.
United Healthcare had the lowest rate of contract compliance, according to the AMA report. About 62 percent of medical services billed were paid by United Healthcare at the contracted rate, compared with 71 percent for Aetna and 98 percent for Medicare.
Medicare performed better than the private insurers in most areas, said Dr. Lawrence Casalino, a University of Chicago health economist and former physician. "There’s no question that administrative costs for doctors and the country would be a lot lower in a single-payer system," Casalino said in an interview after the meeting. But a market-based system has advantages of competition, choice and innovation, he said. "Are the benefits enough to justify the cost?"
For the report card click here