Over one third of all healthcare costs in the U.S. were due to insurance company overhead and provider time spent on billing, versus about 17% spent on administration in Canada, researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine.
When the researchers broke down the 2017 per-capita health administration costs in both countries, they found that insurer overhead accounted for $844 in the U.S. versus $146 in Canada; hospital administration was $933 versus $196; nursing home, home care and hospice administration was $255 versus $123; and physicians' insurance-related costs were $465 versus $87
" looked at how many characters were included in an average physician's note in the U.S. and in other countries," Himmelstein pointed out."Notes from U.S. physicians were four times longer to meet the bureaucratic requirements of the payment system."