alt Hacker NewsThe thing studies like this never take into account is the degree to which all of these administrative jobs are corporate welfare. The inefficiency means a lot of people get a regular paycheck for work that is ultimately nonproductive. If you kill off those jobs by eliminating waste there will be millions of people looking for a new job.
But the bigger problem is the current system is really profitable for the millionaire and billionaire owners of those companies. They're well connected in Congress. Attempting to change the system is extremely difficult when it means so many rich people might lose their gravy train. These people go to expensive campaign dinners. Even when the ACA came out and the first versions had universal healthcare provisions those were quickly and quietly eliminated.
Administration is ~25% of provider expense; billing and insurance is ~8.5% of provider expense. Administration is:
* Billing and claims management
* Compliance
* Customer service
* Operations
* IT
You can drive billing all the way down to zero and you're still going to be spending a lot of money on administration just like any large enterprise does. Those jobs aren't really "corporate welfare" and they exist in every system, although the single-payer systems get a bit of a break on them because they can and do trade responsiveness off for customer service (at likely little cost to outcomes, to be fair!)