More to the point: What's your point? By which I mean, are those percentages intended as an argument that all's right with our present system?

One aspect of the problem is that total costs are out of control (the other being the shamefully poor coverage). We spend more per-capita than other industrialized nations, and get less. The percentages for various expenditures within a company may not tell the whole story. If Aetna spends 87% on delivering services, its cost of delivering those services is too high. If the cost for American health delivery companies is higher than health delivery systems in other countries, it could well be a sign of creative bookkeeping: Padding the cost of services across the board to generate a hidden profit.

This is only speculation based on the numbers, of course. But we have this phenomenon of healthcare costing more under our system than under others; and if the services they're delivering are the same, there must be an explanation somewhere.

Before you reply that it's the "burden of government regulation", remember that you've already accounted for that in the percentages. That's in the 13% administrative/general overhead.

Since the other systems against which we're comparing ours are government-run, it raises the interesting (and emotional) question of whether there might be some things that government can do more efficiently than private enterprise. It's not that I disagree that there are many things PI can do better, it's that I don't assume that private industry is universally better at all things than government. Perhaps healthcare is one of those special things.