Administrative Costs of having all the separate insurance companies is what causes American Health Insur to be so expensive: ONE PAYER PLEASE

This was back in 2003. That means that the information was actually taken from 2001 and 2002 year old data. That means that it is ever so much worse today. Picked this up from a www.democraticunderground.com (DU) discussion on the accerlating costs of health care:

Here is a statement from a poster on the main page today of DU:

"...The entire 'system' is set up to enrich a small number of people .in the Insurance and big pharma industries. As long as they can charge $15 a pill for drugs that sell for 0.20 each in other counties they'll keep doing it. They own our politicians on both sides, so progress toward lowering costs (outside of lowering care) will never be made..."

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Confumer Affairs:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/health_costs.html

"......The study puts the administrative cost of the U.S. system at $294 billion per year, compared to about $9.4 billion in Canada. That translates to a per-person cost of $1,059 in the U.S. and $307 in Canada. A similar study, conducted in 1991, put per-capita costs in the U.S. at $450 and Canadian costs at one-third of that.

The study by Dr. Steffi Woolhandler of the Harvard School of Medicine found that Americans spend more on administrative costs because of the many private companies supplying insurance coverage. The multitude of companies create increased paperwork while Canadian doctors send their claims to a single insurer...."