考研英语精读.doc

HYPERLINK /t_0_29356_0_485100.html[考研英语]阅读精选：纸质账单 用处不多 浪费不小 『每年有数十亿美元被医生、医院以及保险公司浪费在了纸质账单上。』Billions Wasted on Billing纸质账单 用处不多 浪费不小Nov. 12th 2011 | from The New York Times LAST year I had to have a minor biopsy. Every time I went in for an appointment, I had to fill out a form requiring my name, address, insurance information, emergency contact person, vaccination history, previous surgical history and current medical problems, medications and allergies. I must have done it four times in just three days. Then, after my procedure, I received bills — and, even more annoying, statements of charges that said they weren’t bills — almost daily, from the hospital, the surgeon, the primary care doctor, the insurance company. Imagine that repeated millions of times daily and you have one of the biggest money wasters in our health care system. Administration accounts for roughly 14 percent of what the United States spends on health care, or about $360 billion per year. About half of all administrative costs — $163 billion in 2009 — are borne by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies. The other half pays for the legions employed by doctors and hospitals to fill out billing forms, keep records, apply for credentials and perform the myriad other administrative functions associated with health care. The range of expert opinions on how much of this could be saved goes as high as $180 billion, or half of current expenditures. But a more conservative and reasonable estimate comes from David Cutler, an economist at Harvard, who calculates that for the whole system — for insurers as well as doctors and hospitals — electronic billing and credentialing could save $32 billion a year. And United Health comes to a similar estimate, with 20 percent of savings going to the government, 50 percent to physicians and hospitals and 30 percent to insurers. For health care cuts to matter, they have to be above 1 percent of total costs, or 26 billion a year, and this cons