Paying the Doctor

Although it does not seem unusual to us that professionals be compensated for the product or service they provide, there are some professions that make us feel uncomfortable with the necessity of payment. Paying the Doctor explores this dilemma as it relates to the health care field. It analyzes and explains the roles of the health care provider, patient, and market influences in cost and reimbursement. Part introductions to each section familiarize the reader with the specific concerns it contains, and an overall conclusion describes the major points of a planned future payment system. The goal of this volume was to create a book that was general enough to serve as an introduction for members of the health care field and sophisticated enough to appeal also to researchers. To achieve this, editor Jonathan Moreno enlists the aid of a diverse group of professionals: health care providers, economists, historians, philosophers, and others. They begin by providing a series of studies that describe and apply various frameworks for analyzing physician payment, the first of which shows exactly what an enormous challenge the entire subject of reimbursement poses. The following section studies various payment mechanisms. Successive sections study specific professional groups and the Medicare system. Based on this information, a new payment system expected to be introduced within a few years is discussed.