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> The more treatments a doctor gives, the more they get paid You could say this 30 years ago, but it's not really the case today. The majority of physicians ar
by chimeracoder 3y ago
> The more treatments a doctor gives, the more they get paid
You could say this 30 years ago, but it's not really the case today. The majority of physicians are now salaried, not independent. And even for many of the ones in independent private practice, the amount they make is not necessarily tied anymore to the services they provide, due to the rise of capitation and other forms of bundled service agreements.
Nowadays, it's actually statistically more likely that you receive care from a doctor who has an explicit incentive to undertreat, because they receive a fixed amount of money per patient per year, and the costs of treatment come out of pocket directly with no additional reimbursement.
- coldcode 3y agoThis is the basis of all Medicare Advantage Plans, where the physician or their employer gets X$ a month per MAP patient and must pay for most of the cost of care. The insurance company gets to keep most of its share of what Medicare pays. Nice profit ensues for the insurance company.
- nradov 3y agoInsurance companies that sell Medicare Advantage plans end up keeping only a tiny fraction of what they're paid, hardly "most". This is a low-margin, high-volume business. You can find the details in their published financial reports.
- valleyer 3y agoI would love to see some data on this, if anyone knows of any. I'll just provide anecdata that of the doctors among my friends and family, more of them get paid by "wRVU" [0], which is basically a derivative of "how much treatment you give", than by salary. (I only happen to know this because they complain nearly incessantly about the wRVU system! I make no claim to be an expert on the topic.) [0] https://www.physiciansthrive.com/physician-compensation/wrvu-physician-compensation/ https://www.physiciansthrive.com/physician-compensation/wrvu...