Tag Archives: waste

The United States spends around $2.5 trillion per year on health care. Approximately 14 percent of this is administrative spending. That’s $360 billion, yes, billion with a ‘b’, annually. And, by all accounts a significant proportion of this huge sum is duplicate, redundant, wasteful and unnecessary spending — that’s a lot of paperwork.

LAST year I had to have a minor biopsy. Every time I went in for an appointment, I had to fill out a form requiring my name, address, insurance information, emergency contact person, vaccination history, previous surgical history and current medical problems, medications and allergies. I must have done it four times in just three days. Then, after my procedure, I received bills — and, even more annoying, statements of charges that said they weren’t bills — almost daily, from the hospital, the surgeon, the primary care doctor, the insurance company.