Statistics from several Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries on consumption and cost of health care services, physician workload, and physician earnings are presented. Data are analyzed according to type of physician payment used: fee for service, per case, capitation, or salary. Incentives theoretically embodied in each payment method are often offset by other factor...

T hough only 16 percent of Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in managed care plans in 2000, these plans continue to be attractive for several reasons. Foremost, such plans (termed Medicare+Choice plans) provide a much more affordable source of supplemental coverage than is available through such offerings as Medigap, which covers many costs that Medicare alone does not (Nelson et al. 1997; S...

Introduction T his analysis examines accountable care organizations (ACOs) and assesses their implications for antitrust policy. Consideration of the antitrust implications of ACOs is timely. Both the House and Senate health reform measures contemplate the creation of ACOs as a new class of Medicare provider while providing parallel legal authority under Medicaid. It also is possible that using...

INTRODUCTION Patient education is a critical component of the patient-centered medical home and is a powerful and effective tool in chronic disease management. However, little is known about the effect of practice payment on rates of patient education during office encounters. METHODS For this study we took data from the 2009 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. This was a cross-sectional...

background and objectives: informal payment in the health settings is a significant challenge facing the health system, with consequences such as inequity in access to healthcare services, distrust to health care system, and dissatisfied customers. detailed identification of the nature of the problem is perquisite to developing relevant overcoming strategies. given that, this study aimed at pro...

Traditionally, most health care systems which pretend to any sort of rationality and cost control have sought to allocate their limited funds in order to secure equal opportunity of access for equal need. The UK government is implementing a fundamental change of resource allocation philosophy towards 'contributing to the reduction of avoidable health inequalities'. The purpose of this essay is ...

The United States stands at a crossroads in how to pay for health care. Fee for service, the dominant payment model in the U.S. and many other countries, is now widely recognized as perhaps the single biggest obstacle to improving health care delivery. A battle is currently raging, outside of the public eye, between the advocates of two radically different payment approaches: capitation and bun...

The market-oriented health care reforms taking place in the Netherlands show a clear resemblance to the proposals for managed competition in U.S. health care. In both countries good risk adjustment mechanisms that prevent cream skimming--that is, that prevent plans from selecting the best health risks--are critical to the success of the reforms. In this paper we present an overview of the Dutch...