Interesting article from Forbes magazine on how consumer driven health-care has been proven wrong #p2
The physician group also decided that the key to success would be to emphasize ‘birth to death’ primary care, focused on fostering good health in order to stave off serious illness and to catch and treat illness before it escalates to the serious disease where the big money is spent.
This philosophy is what runs contrary to the consumer driven approach that keeps people out of the doctors office at the early stages (they chose not to see the doctor rather than spend their own money) only to send them rushing in for treatment for something that could have been easily treatable at an earlier point when it would be far less expensive.
Here's the kicker. This was done with a modified co-op, where the goal wasn't profit driven. Quoting more:
It begins with the primary care doctors and many local specialists getting together—some 30 years ago—to form the Independent Physicians Association. The purpose of the group was not to help make more money for its members but rather to provide everyone in the community with the best possible health care at the most efficient price.
As for expensive testing and procedures, participating physicians are subject to peer reviews where any proclivity to engage in procedures or tests of questionable value by a physician will be called out. Any doctor found, in the judgment of his or her peers (not the government) to be racking up charges with unneeded tests or procedures, will be punished at the end of the year with a lump of coal in the stocking rather than the substantial Christmas bonus awarded from the insurance company pool to physicians who have held down costs while achieving good medical results. It is worth noting that this pool is the result of money being available that, were the insurer to be for-profit, would be turned over to shareholders rather than the physicians.
Read the whole thing at this link