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That would be a hard thing to calculate. So you hire someone to build a bridge. You paid this amount of people xx amount of money to do the job. That's something you can quantify. Then you could say it cut miles for these commuters saving xx amount of dollars. Not to mention direct and indirect benefits and other factors. Issues like healthcare get vastly more complicated.
It would be projections you'd have to make years into the future and pay some consulting firm to figure out. Even then you could have a million different viewpoints and a million different ways to arrive at the numbers. I couldn't answer this question.
wait wait. you said healthcare get vastly more complicated? says WHO?
it actually is LESS complicated.
do you know the one issue they had with implemented obama care when it came to the IT side of things? everyone has their own database. Anthem Blue Cross of California has theirs. What used to be Horizon BlueCross Blue SHield New Jersey has their own. even though they are both Blue cross. They aint under the same mother company (one was under anthem, the other under horizon). Different databases can mean a lot of differences even the simple differences can muck up a system change. which is what was going on with all the state exchanges.
your system has to connect to the state system. to pull that off. your database info Headers in each table(or if you imagine using excel, the headers of each column) has to be the exact same or you have to program it to where it knows that the exchange column/table thats called Policy ID# = Member Number on Blue Cross' system. That stuff alone multiplied by who knows how many tables/columns. can make it hell to implement a new system.
But i will tell you this. everyone has their own guidelines to some degree. but they all have come to agree on one set of guidelines as far as billing actual claims/claim forms. its called CMS guidelines. thats a UNIVERSAL guideline. so even though healthcare is still a private ran thing aside from medicaid(state level govy plans)/ and medicare (fed level govy plans). with all that privatization these companies realized they needed to have some guidelines across the board. the claim form was one of them. HCPC codes/ICD9 (will be icd10 in october), etc. all universal.
a lot of times when some of these smaller insurance companies need to come up with a Contracted Rate. They use Medicare or medicaid(state) contract rates. There are times they will use medicare guidelines as far as what they deem to be medically necessary.
Why do you think this is?
Because its much easier to streamline your process if you can use a tried and true method.
The government has tight guidelines on things that are covered, not covered, what they deem experimental until further proven otherwise. Sure they could loosen that leash a bit if we go single payer. But what you would get with everyone on the SAME system. is Everyone's ID# is the exact same(not same number, but the name type of alpha numeric number or all alpha or all numeric number. our group numbers will be formatted the same, our claims will have the same type of codes. the qualifications for something to be medically necessary would be the same for everyone. unless they want to break it up by age or by medical condition(diagnosis). doing this. stream lines the entire process of, processing claims, getting claims paid, and even appealing denials, etc. that saves tons of times, which saves Tons of money.
i'll give you a simple example of time spent.
a claim is billed to Anthem Blue Cross of CA for $1000,
BC denies a portion of the claim incorrectly, and only pays $200.00
Some rep calls and sends off an appeal letter saying Hey you owe us an addtl 800.00. this rep has to attach a new claim with the appeal letter.
BC denies the new claim as a duplicate to the old claim. even though the rep stated clearly that it was a reprocessed claim.
the provider gets the denial. but depending on how much work load they have. no telling the next time some rep will see this old claim again.
someone finally gets to it 4 months later. calls blue cross. tells them what happened. some rep from Blue cross who's actually from the Philippines or india or some other foreign country is handling their calls. said rep sends it back to be reprocessed. or so they say.
2 months later, provider rep runs into an unpaid claim again. he/she sends another letter and calls again to find out whats the hold up.
Blue cross says we didnt get a claim sent back for review 2 months ago its just sitting there.
wait so that foreigner rep didnt even do his/her job right? NOPE they didnt.
and guess what. now Blue cross is saying doesnt matter now, if you send it again, it will deny for Timely(meaning it exceeded the alloted time frame you can have a claim sent back to be reprocessed.)
do you know how much those reps get in those positions? i'll tell you this, its more than min wage. Think about all the time it took for that to go back n forth. the cost to mailing that appeal out TWICE. the phone calls, etc. you're wasting private companies times on both ends. and wasting their money and one of the companies is going to lose money on the deal in the end.
that wasted time and 5 extra touches or so. probably cost them $300, not counting the money they lost in the end.
single payer means. claims goes thru the system. gets incorrectly processed. some provider rep calls an AMERICAN rep, that knows what they are doing. and the claim is reprocessed on the spot. time saved. $$$ saved. now multiply that savings by as many reprocessible claims that are out there in the wild.
everyone in the nation would know and understand their benefits. something that does not happen today. people dont really understand how their health insurance works. so thats another issue.
single payer also means these outside providers can get called out for over charging for their services/products. if a wheelchair costs $500 to make, market, R&D, and a little profit at the end. fine. $500 it is. but if it only costs you $60 to make. sorry bruh inc. you cant sell that to an insurance company for $500, making a $440 profit on every wheel chair. thats ludicrous. and ludicrous is exactly where the healthcare industry is right now. Because people dont know the prices things should be. they are being scared into choosing anything thats out there because its their healthy. so usually you dont have time to go bargain shopping. sure the insurances do it a bit but not enough. so that alone saves everyone money. the only people that have an issue now are the providers OVER CHARGING for products. no more would they be able to make GREAT money. but they would be able to make GOOD steady money since EVERYONE aind their mama would be insured.
truth is, if the govvy insures us all. the govvy can also say, yall have to start eating right. or else you will get penalized. this can get scary to those that "dont want to be told anything, even though they need to be told things that help them." they may get on us about exercising. because the more we take care of our bodies the healthier we are in general. and the less you see people getting really sick which costs a lot of money to deal with. this saves a TON of money and again helps the avg joe citizen as well.
last but not least. a single payer system makes it much easier to pull data and find trends of whats working and whats not. and if its a public system. guess what? they have to supply all that data to every citizen. meaning the cost of everything has to be available. the historical data has to be there. so even lay persons like us can pull that information and perhaps run our own data analysis and find out issues/trends, etc. and take that to the media to shed light on loop holes, or just bad business practices. its hard as hell to do that when you have so many PRIVATE entities involved. your big daddy insurance company will just say we are about to do a rate hike. they dont have to tell you WHY and break it down point by point. thats because its a private company not public.