By Allen Frances, MD
We have become a pill popping society. It makes absolutely no sense that twenty percent of our population regularly uses a psychotropic medicine and that the United States has more deaths each year from overdose with prescription drugs than from street drugs.
“As companies seek ways to curb health-care spending, insurer WellPoint Inc. is rolling out a program that lets employers pay only a set amount for a medical service, asking workers who select costlier care to pay the difference.”
Editor’s Note: Reference Based Pricing makes sense. Why pay one MRI center $4,300 for the same procedure you can get down the street for $650? Under the WellPoint model, if an insured selects the more expensive provider as in the case above, the patient would be responsible for the difference, or $3,650. This is steerage on steroids.
Cost Plus, or Reference Based Pricing, is gaining market share through an ever increasing number of payers – http://blog.riskmanagers.us/?p=11457
Physicians, including the AMA, appear to be finally rebelling against tedious, questionable HHS coding rules which favor HHS, insurers and other HIT stakeholders more than patients. If the ICD-10 mandate fails because of lack of cooperation from doctors who are already overwhelmed with regulatory busywork, imagine the threat common sense presents Obamacare.
