Health reform is in reach. That's what this op-ed from a week ago said. One thing stuck out in this article was talk of Moving closer to a health care model where patients are rewarded for living healthier. In FREE=MORE, the patient is rewarded for incurring costs. They have no incentive to do less because everything is paid for. The same goes for physicians who bill on a fee for service. Do more, get paid more.
Having systems in place where you are rewarded for doing less seems like an obvious way to control costs. People respond to money. Either we have to bribe people to stay healthy or we are going to have to simply stop paying for care.
Which would you rather have?
I would say that you are being too optimistic. It would be nice if patients only had no incentive to do less. Under the current system, they have every incentive do MORE and MORE. have had plenty of people over the years say they wanted some RX medication when an OTC would suffice because "I don't want to leave any money on the table". Heck even my Family Practice doc asked me if I was really sure I did not want the fancy prescription when OTC Claritan and NasoChrome were doing a fine job controlling my allergies.
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