"ease administrative burdens and reduce costs". While he didn't allude to this directly I am so sick of hearing about the glorious ability of Medicaid/Medicare to have such low administrative costs. I'm really skeptical of the administrative costs being lower. For one, does MedicaidMedicare count the cost of collecting it's revenue through the IRS(or the imposed costs on companies and citizens to correctly pay those taxes)? For another does Medicaid count the millions that companies ultimately collect in higher fees to pay for interpreting their insane paperwork(how many commercials have I heard saying -we'll do the paperwork for you?-the companies is paying for all that work through funds collected from Medicaid/Medicare). I don't claim to have statistics or anything on this I just want to know if their 'low administrative costs' take all these things into consideration.
Medicare does have lower admin costs than private insurance companies about 5-9% admin compared with the 15% range for pvt policies. The irony is that Medicare claims payment has always been outsourced to private insurers. The lower costs are partially due to a uniform benefits package.
Medicaid is a tougher nut to crack b/c its benefits and administration varies state by state.
