Insurance costs are so high because the insurance system has grown into a bloated bureaucracy whose purpose is not to serve consumers better or make health care more accessible, but to maximize profits. These bureaucracies function to confuse consumers, restrict coverage, and reject doctors’ claims.

• Percent change in health care employment between 1970 and 1998: 149 [6]
• Percent change in employment of health care administrators in the same time: 2,348 [6]
• Minimum cost in dollars of medical bureaucracy and paperwork per year: 294,300,000,000 [6]
• Minimum cost in dollars of medical bureaucracy per capita in the US: 1,059 [9]
• Cost per capita in Canada’s single payer system: 307 [9]
• Percent of medical spending in US that pays for paperwork and bureaucracy: 31 [9]
• Percent of medical spending eaten up by waste, fraud, and excessive prices: 50 [3]
• Approximate percent of insurance claims from doctors that insurers will reject: 30 [5]