Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> LawTechTV

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Law Students

: LawTechTV

Health Care Fee For Service is Dead: RIP

ADVERTISEMENTS

OK, maybe it's not dead yet but it is on its way out if you read between the lines. I caught Stuart Altman on the NewsHour tonight and he gave a nod in that direction. For those of you who don't know who Stuart is, he is one of the hundred most influential people in health care (according to the link above) and Obama's health care architect.

What is fee for service? It means that doctors get paid for doing work, but not for results. Talk about Soviet style corporate welfare. In no other American industry that I know of is their anything remotely comparable to the idea of fee for service. You hire a mechanic to fix your car and he runs a bunch of tests but when you get the car back the brakes still don't work. In fact, he didn't even look at the brakes, just ran some tests. Can you get your money back? Maybe. At least a court of law would entertain it.

What about doctors? Nope. For the most part they just do stuff and get paid. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything personally against doctors. I don't do medical malpractice work and have no intention to. What I am against is a system that rewards a concept like fee for service. It has to stop. We desperately need to introduce the idea of competition into healthcare and start rewarding doctors that produce verifiable outcomes (i.e. real benefits to patients measured by results pertaining to a specific medical condition).

Our current system is corrupt and broken. The only discipline today is imposed via malpractice suits and that is just a sorry excuse for a valuable check and balance. I am not opposed to these suits mind you. If you are incompetent and negligent then you pay. That's the way our tort system works, doctors don't get a free pass. But what I am against is such a wickedly stupid way of imposing discipline. We need a bigger carrot and a smaller stick. The bigger carrot is pay for performance.

I for one will not mourn the day fee for service dies. RIP.

Full post as published by LawTechTV on January 08, 2009 (boomark / email).