Medicare’s ‘Efficiency’

Everybody “knows” that government agencies are more efficient than private health insurance at delivering medical benefits and services. After all, Medicare’s administrative costs, at roughly 2 percent of the cost of benefits, are lower than those of private insurance. In the first presidential debate, President Obama claimed that “every study has shown that Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurance does.”  

Not so fast, Mr. President. Comparisons between Medicare and private insurance are misleading.
Let’s unpack the facts. The administrative costs of Medicare are usually calculated as a percentage of Medicare’s total costs. The cost of administering the program is compared with benefits paid. Presented in this fashion, the administrative costs are indeed relatively low.
But as health-care economist Robert Book explains, “Medicare patients are by definition elderly, disabled, or patients with end-stage renal disease, and as such have higher average patient care costs, so expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs gives a misleading picture of relative efficiency.” In other words, Medicare spends a lot of money on benefits, and these expenditures make its administrative costs look small in comparison. When administrative costs are viewed on a per-beneficiary basis, as in Book’s evaluation, and not as a percentage of total costs, Medicare’s administrative costs are seen to be slightly higher than those of private insurance, even though in private insurance these costs include money spent on non-administrative functions such as marketing.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331704/medicare-s-efficiency-robert-moffit