When your doctor bills your insurance company, she begins a complex, expensive, and inefficient process during which she will spend an average of 12% of her patient revenue as well as wasting a considerable amount her own time. A recent study, Saving Billions of Dollars--and Physicians' Time--by Streamlining Billing Practices published on April 29, 2010 in the Journal: Health Affairs, estimates that on a national scale that translates to $7 billion wasted.

The study points out that billions of dollars could be saved each year by a uniform system of provider payments - uniform to all insurance companies. Medicare already has such a system of transparent payment requirements in place. Perhaps not ideal, but using them insures fair and accurate payment of providers. We've all heard the horror stories of fraud and waste in the Medicare system. But the FBI estimates that the the fraud and abuse in Medicare compares to private insurance companies - 3-10 percent.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes broad requirements to streamline medical billing, but like many aspects of the law, many details are left to be worked out in the next few years. Given the amount of money that could be listed under the "money saved" side of the equation, perhaps we'll see a uniform, transparent payment system take shape.