What private health insurance costs us

Steffie Woolhandler, Letter to the New York Times - Peer-reviewed studies in The New England Journal of Medicine by two colleagues and me document that administrative costs account for 31 percent of health spending in the United States versus 17 percent in Canada. The 14 percentage-point difference translates to $380 billion in potential savings in 2011. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.  A single-payer reform could realize these savings by eliminating insurance middlemen and radically simplifying payments to doctors and hospitals.