. . . , a large part of America’s health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada.
For the full commentary, see:
PAUL KRUGMAN. "The Medical Money Pit." The New York Times (Friday, April 15, 2005): A19.
Canada may beat the U.S. in this dimension of health care, but they lose in many other important dimensions–for example the wait time to receive ‘elective’ surgeries. And anyway, isn’t 17 percent still too high?