American doctors spend a huge amount of hours dealing with the paperwork from health insurance plans. They spend significantly more time on insurance papers than doctors in Canada need to do. If American doctors didn’t have to devote so many hours to paperwork it could reduce the cost of health care.
It is wonderful to have health insurance coverage. People with health insurance have a much easier time paying for their medical bills than people who lack insurance coverage. If your insurance plan requires you to fill out and send claim forms, in order to get reimbursed for the health care you received, you probably find this to be at least somewhat annoying. No one enjoys spending time doing insurance paperwork.
American doctors, unfortunately, end up spending a huge amount of hours on insurance paperwork. All this time spent on administrative work is making the cost of health insurance rise. A study that was lead by Dante Morra of the University of Toronto finds that if American doctors could reduce the amount of insurance paperwork that they were doing, in order to match the amount that doctors in Ontario, Canada, are doing, the total savings would be around $27.6 billion per year.
Things get really interesting when you compare the health care system in Canada to the health care system in the United States. There are many significant differences that have an affect on the cost of health care in each country. Canada uses what has been called a “single payer” system. This means that Canadian doctors only have to file forms with one organization. American doctors, on the other hand, have multiple different insurance companies that they are required to send paperwork to, in order to receive payment.
This means that American doctors spend about $83,000 (per doctor each year), dealing with insurance paperwork. Canadian doctors only end up spending around $22,000 per doctor each year on the same function.
Researchers at Cornell University and the University of Toronto did a study that showed that the staff who work in American doctor’s offices spend about ten times longer per physician per week on health insurance paperwork than Canadian doctors do. American doctors are spending about 21 hours per week dealing with insurance paperwork, while Canadian doctors are only needing to spend about 2.5 hours per week on those tasks.
It is believed that all this time that doctors have to spend on administrative tasks, dealing with insurance paperwork, is causing the cost of health care to rise. The Obama administration has been working on health care reform that would cut down on the costs of health care. At the same time, there are Republican lawmakers, and other groups, who are working very hard to challenge these types of changes.
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