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Friday, March 27, 2015

Should the U.S. Move Away From Fee-for-Service Medicine?

Paul B. Ginsburg says fee for service pushes up costs; Richard Amerling says it leads to better care

Fee-for-service medical care, in which providers charge fees for specific services, is a prime battleground for policy makers in health care.

If providers stand to make more money the more tests and procedures they perform, critics of the system say it’s no wonder that health-care costs have skyrocketed in recent years.

Efforts are under way to reimburse providers based on the value, not the volume, of care—including paying doctors to keep patients healthy. Medicare plans to shift 50% of its payments to such programs by 2018.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We need to go back to paying cash for doctors visits and major medical insurance.

Anonymous said...

And that amount we pay should never be higher than the amount insurance companies pay.

Anonymous said...

You can't always blame the doctor for patient outcome. They can't control the cancer killing a body or the obesity-related illnesses that a patient brought on themselves. Sometimes bad things happen to people for no reason.