A prescription for making US health care better quality, more accessible, and less expensive for all of us. 

The military health care system is different in many ways from the civilian system, but a primary difference is the income incentive. Simply put, health care providers and other medical professionals are not paid based on the number of patients that they see or the number of procedures that they do. Instead they receive a fixed salary with few if any bonuses for productivity or quality. The budgets for military health care institutions, and many others in the Federal government, are based on Congressional appropriations, not on productivity. This has been changing in the past decade but remains largely true today.

Civilian medicine is not so. They are paid for what they did, patients seen and procedures done, and everyone on staff is usually highly motivated to do more. Some have described such fee-for-service reimbursement arrangements as “you eat what you kill.” In some practices, that can equate to more visits and more procedures, even if some are not medically required.

Continue reading “Healing the Health Care Cost Conundrum” →