No. of Recommendations: 3
You hold that 7% of the workforce has the political juice to make their jobs inviolate, even though they contribute nothing to patient care. I hold that, if the 80% of the workforce who are paying for those unproductive jobs knew how their health care dollars are being wasted, the fact that they outnumber the paper shufflers more than 10 to 1 would make the elimination of that "administrative overhead" a political imperative.
I laud you for your optimism. I just think it runs against the entire history of U.S. politics. The "doc fix" is instructive - when faced with imposing a significant cost on a small group of organized people, but which would have yielded a benefit to all U.S. taxpayers, Congress capitulated to the smaller group that was facing the big hit. Every single time. Seventeen times in a row. Same thing with the "Cadillac tax" and the individual mandate in the ACA. Provisions that would have reduced the health care costs for the masses, at the expense of imposing additional costs on a much smaller group of people....but tossed out the window on a bipartisan basis.
But I'm sure this time would be different.
