The “new” payment model for healthcare providers is actually as old as feudalism.
“Major providers, insurers plan aggressive push to new payment models – Several of the nation’s largest health systems and insurers are joining together in a new task force with the goal of shifting 75% of their business to contracts with incentives for quality and lower-cost healthcare.” By Melanie Evans for ModernHealthcare, January 28, 2015. (more).
Artificial command-and-control alternatives to free market pricing are hardly unprecedented in world history. Task forces in the Soviet Union as well as China tried forcing farmers to patriotically produce “quality” food for the people at very low cost for decades. However, even as those in power prospered (for a while), farmers and their families suffered needless depravations along with the rest of the populace.
The natural transparency inherent in modern, interconnected society makes it increasingly difficult for despots to get away with disobeying economic law in the land of the free.
D. Kellus Pruitt DDS