A headless chicken wastes no resources on administration: the myth of efficiency
I was reading some of the letters to the NY times today and am still shaking my head about the faulty metric being used to measure the effectiveness of Medicare: low administrative cost.
Now, setting aside that the way administrative cost is measured still misses significant cost shifted to other parties (namely providers and DOJ), in theory, it still doesn’t make any sense to me.
When a chicken gets its head cut off, it also “benefits” from reduced administrative costs . Lots of activity, with no wasted sugar going up to the brain…is this the “efficiency” we want for our health system?
Similarly, the postal service “wastes” less on profit than Fedex. Yet, when you need your package to actually get there the next day (and know exactly where it is along the way), which one do you use? I thought so…
