J. Ross on administrative costs
Jonathon Ross, MD, MPH, immediate past president of PNHP, comments on administrative costs:
One should not forget the unmeasured administrative costs in the personnel offices of the businesses. They must deal with all the fuss and bother of contracting with and dealing with the service issues for their employees. This is measured as a business cost but is really a health administrative cost passed on to business that must deal with the added costs in the personnel office. I have informally interviewed about 10 personnel officers at a range of different size businesses and they estimate that about 25-50% of the time spent in the personnel office has to do with health insurance issues including enrollment and disenrollment, service issues, and time spent on decisions involving benefits, purchasing, negotiating with unions or insurers, etc. Lastly, there are the unmeasured costs of the individual trying to sort out health insurance issues such as which coverage to choose, insurance co-payments and deductibles, what doctor to choose when coverage changes and your doctor is no longer in the network, etc.