Oh, now who's dodging?

If an insurer manages to double a doctor's administrative costs for billing/appeals/etc., where does it show up in your tables, per your link's PDF of definitions?

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

You have no evidence for this argument. It's just vibes. The numbers here are stark. It's not like it's close, between providers and insurers. Insurers are almost literally a rounding error.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

You asserted "the macro NHE table from last year… simply refutes the argument you're trying to make", but that claim is false. You are welcome to answer the question about where "doc spends two hours on phone arguing with UHC" falls in the expenditure list; it's not insurance, but it's caused by it.

> Insurers are almost literally a rounding error.

Again, the argument is that the raw cost of health insurance does not reflect its externalities imposed on the other items in your list; that insurers drive up hospital and practice costs, as they have to staff up enormous amounts of staff and expensive physician time to deal with the insurer.

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

$360B in admin/net cost of insurance. $2.5T in practitioner costs.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

> $2.5T in practitioner costs.

Some of which is those practicioners' admin cost from dealing with the insurers. (And, you know, doing the actual work.)

Denials are nice and cheap. Fighting them is not.

	▲	tptacek 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You stated this claim upthread, for the record, and tracked down an actual Canada vs. US statistic on this, which turned out to account for roughly 3.6% of total provider inpatient/outpatient expense.