Stephen C Schimpff's Blog Posts Tagged 'Costs' (2)

It is often difficult to appreciate that improving the care of patients can actually reduce the costs of care. Last year Dr H Brody wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine (vol 362, p283-5) about “Medicine’s ethical responsibility for health care reform – the top five list.”  In essence he challenged physicians to be first to find ways to rationally reduce health care costs by identifying the top five tests or treatments in any given specialty or subspecialty that could be markedly…

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Today we mostly have prepaid medical care insurance with some co-pays and deductibles – both with commercial insurance and with Medicare. In other words, our insurance covers essentially everything from basic and routine care to the catastrophic. And the insurance pays out based on units of care – a visit, a test, a procedure, a hospitalization, a prescription. This creates a system in which providers (physicians, hospitals, drug and device companies, others) get paid for a unit of activity –… Continue