Posted on 07/17/2009 11:04:15 AM PDT by george76
A state commission recommended yesterday that Massachusetts dramatically change how doctors and hospitals are paid, essentially putting providers on a budget as a way to control exploding healthcare costs and improve the quality of care.
The 10-member commission, which includes key legislators and members of Governor Deval Patrick’s administration, voted unanimously to largely scrap the current system, in which insurers typically pay doctors and hospitals a negotiated fee for each individual procedure or visit. That arrangement is widely seen as leading to unneeded tests and procedures.
Massachusetts would be the first state to adopt such a broad “global payment’’ system, and commission members are acutely aware that Congress and the Obama administration are watching how the state moves forward as the federal government overhauls healthcare nationally.
“This is an historic moment, an extraordinary moment in healthcare in Massachusetts,’’
The plan would require significant restructuring of the healthcare system...to form so-called accountable care organizations. Insurers would pay the accountable care organization a flat yearly per-patient fee ...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
“...they’ll be on the government payroll.”
They won’t be able to afford six-figure malpractice insurance on a gov’t salary.
This could get interesting.
Notice I put that in quotes. I recognize them for nothing much more than a useful tool of the Left - operating much like a union. After we get universal healthcare, they likely will turn into a union....officially.
One reason Canada has fewer doctors per capita is they set a wage for doctors, and most are not willing to work up there for so little money.
Very few even join AMA now days, it speaks for a small percentage of doctors and some of the offshoot organizations in 17 states are fighting back against the AMA endorsement from yesterday.
Rationed by Romney.
Flows off the tongue.
Fricken communism.
bump.
didn’t they just boot off 30,000 legals from their RomneyCare plan?
Its too bad liberals don’t read those... someone should post it at Yahoo Answers, where DUmmies hang out
LOL—can we say “primary care doctors avoid the chronically ill”—!! Dr. Jones does not take new patients unless they are young and healthy and do not have high blood pressure and/or diabetes.
see 29—people in Mass can’t find family docs if they have a lot of medical problems.
Capped salaries, rationing of care, and NO tort reform in sight - gosh, what could go wrong here?
At the public level in the UK....doctors are exiting on a weekly basis. The system is not capable of supporting long-term care for decades to come. You can predict the UK system falling apart by 2020 without a radical change...but no one is willing to pay for anything...thats the curious thing...they just want free care.
One of my co-workers spent significant time in OB/GYN. He is still having to remind himself that VB means Visual Basic in a software shop.
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Heh.
I think a lot of people don’t understand how physicians are paid or how malpractice insurance actually works. They seem to think practioners are paid an exhorbitant salary for something that should be a right; beyond that, they don’t think.
They won’t be able to afford six-figure malpractice insurance on a gov’t salary.
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Can you sue the government?
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