health care costs (was Soviet and US Economy)

[Enrique Diaz-Alvarez]

Les Schaffer wrote:
> 
> >>>>> ">" == michael perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:
> 
>     >> Our health care represents a high share in part because of the
>     >> huge profit margins and the concentration of health resources
>     >> in the last weeks of a person's life and on the needs of the
>     >> well to do.
> 
> how big is the profit margin? people are always telling me insurance
> companies don't make tons of money. is that true? are the profit
> margins in the doctors' bottom lines? hospitals'? medical R&D
> companies'???
> 

According to Consumer Reports, 21 cents out of every dollar collected by
HMOs in premiums is spent in something other than health care. I have
also heard the figure of 26 cents. And I believe that 21% figure does
not account for the enormous bureaucratic costs imposed on doctors and
hospitals by byzantine collection procedures, i.e., doctor secretaries
and hospital bureaucrats are counted as "health care spending".

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