News
When Professors Speak Out, Some Students Stay Quiet. Can Harvard Keep Everyone Talking?
News
Allston Residents, Elected Officials Ask for More Benefits from Harvard’s 10-Year Plan
News
Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin Warns of Federal Data Misuse at IOP Forum
News
Woman Rescued from Freezing Charles River, Transported to Hospital with Serious Injuries
News
Harvard Researchers Develop New Technology to Map Neural Connections
A Harvard research team has released a study showing that Blue Cross and Blue Shield nationally spent 60 per cent more for administrative costs per subscriber in 1969 than in 1965.
Dr. Robert J. Weiss, Dr. William Wiese and Dr. Joel C. Kleinman of the Harvard Center for Community Health and Medical Care reported their analyses of 74 Blue Cross and 73 Blue Shield plans in the New England Journal of Medicine.
They concluded that 140 million subscribers could have saved $119 million in 1969 had all the Blue Cross-Blue Shield health insurance plans been administered as efficiently as a mere few had.
The study found that one Boston-area institution using a Blue Cross-Blue Shield plan for its employees paid $15.72 to administrate each claim, although over one-third of the claims filed were under $20.
Massachusetts Costs Doubled
During the interval studied, the report states. Massachusetts Blue Cross-Blue Shield processing expenditures doubled for each enrollee.
"Up to the present, there has been no incentive for private insurance companies to monitor their own costs, because these are always passed on directly to the consumer," the doctors said.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield officials countered the charge of poor management and inefficiency. They asserted that the culprit is the increased cost of fighting medical inflation and the greater benefits offered to their subscribers.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.