Health Care Costs are high because of admin costs.

This graph from the NYTIMES points out the obvious that has been known for years. I always said you want to cut costs, slice the paper work down to next to nothing.

It shows the number of people employed in various occupations within the health care sector. The takeaway: For every doctor, there are five (!) people performing health care administrative support.

You know, in the last year or so, I have read a lot about the huge administration burden plaguing the American health care industry. But something about this chart really drove the point home.

There are two basic reasons for the absurdly large administrative employment in health care. First, our health care system — with its actuarily-focused multiple health insurers, paper-based record-keeping and multiple billing systems — is bound to create a lot of administrative work. Second, the way the payment system is structured, there is little incentive to make the system more efficient.

There is a lot of “money spent to doing things than in no other industry do we tolerate,” as Dr. Cutler explained in a Big Think video last year.