Reply #9: Easy to find... [View All]

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that administrative costs under the public Medicare plan are less than 2 percent of expenditures, compared with approximately 11 percent of spending by private plans under Medicare Advantage. This is a near perfect “apples to apples” comparison of administrative costs, because the public Medicare plan and Medicare Advantage plans are operating under similar rules and treating the same population.

(And even these numbers may unduly favor private plans: A recent General Accounting Office report found that in 2006 Medicare Advantage plans spent 83.3 percent of their revenue on medical expenses, with 10.1 percent going to non-medical expenses and 6.6 percent to profits—a 16.7 percent administrative share.)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/administrative-costs/

The Medical Benefit Ratio... what percentage of health insurance payments are used for actual care... of health insurance companies averages about 82%. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24524348/Medical-Benefit-Ratio-MBR

I post that stuff regularly on local newspaper opinion boards. I get <crickets> in response.