Health Care System Wastes Up to $850 Billion Annually, Report Says

3 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Washington Reporter

According to a report by Thomson Reuters, the American health care system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, which is up to a third of the nation's total health care costs. "America's health care system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," said the report, which was completed by Thomson Reuters' vice president for health care analytics.

The report highlights several key areas where the U.S. system excels at inefficiency:

-- Unnecessary care, such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests, to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 percent of health care waste.

-- Fraud makes up 22 percent of the wasted expenditures, or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams.

-- Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for 18 percent of waste.

-- Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year, or 11 percent of the total.
-- Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

Filed Under: Health Care

Tagged: daily guidance, DailyGuidance, health care, health care reform, HealthCare, HealthCareReform

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.