4 ms·

I think the premise is that the cost savings for maintenance and low complexity care make the risk of paying for emergency care worth it? Which I'd love to see

• PaulHoule 10y ago
  Models where a provider network gets $X a year to handle a chronic condition patient are one of the few bright spots in recent health care policies. Ten years back we may be looking at high deductable plans as a disaster -- if you have the money to fill an HSA they are great, but for most people in the U.S. an HDCP means that diabetics will not take metformin or insulin but instead they will get their feet amputated at much greater cost. One clear example is asthma. Steroid inhalers can often enable an asthma patient to breathe freely and avoid hospital admissions for about $200 a month. That looks like a crazy high price, but a hospital admission is going to cost $8000 or more. In the fee-for-service model the hospital profits from amputations, asthma exacerbations, etc. In a flat fee model they make a profit from practing good medicine.