ABSTRACT
The high administrative costs of America’s health insurance system, with its thousands of insuring entities and more than a million providers and practitioners, have been a focus of policy discussion for decades. Advocates of single-payer options have often pointed to the lower costs in other countries’ systems or in our own Medicare program and have suggested that savings on administrative spending from adoption of universal public insurance could finance much of the cost of care for the uninsured. Conversely, those who favor a reduced role for insurance in medical care financing-for example, through the promotion of high-deductible insurance plans-contend that this approach would save money because a third party would not be interposed in many routine consumer-provider transactions.
