Stephen C Schimpff's Blog – July 2010 Archive (2)

Time to Rethink How We Pay for Medical Care and Healthcare

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

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 10, 2010 at 5:22pm — 3 Comments

Today’s Health Insurance Has Perverse Incentives

Whether we have commercial insurance through our employer or Medicare, the incentives are poorly aligned to lower costs and improve quality. In fact, they actually encourage greater and greater expenditures. In most instances, our insurance covers everything from prevention to basic routine care to complex care of serious illness. Coverage may not be all that good for some things like preventive care and our primary care physician feels underpaid for routine visits but nevertheless we basically… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 1, 2010 at 8:47am — No Comments