Methods of cost control: Capitation
As I have mentioned previously, the extension of health insurance to all Americans by 2013, as proposed by President Obama, will, by itself, do nothing to control the escalating costs of health care. Rather, by increasing demand without correspondingly increasing supply, there is every reason to believe that it will put additional upward pressure on the cost curve. A point of general agreement among health care economists is that the prevalent fee for service model for the delivery of physician, hospital and other professional services is a significant source of the cost problem. This model gives strong incentives to providers to direct patients toward more, and more intensive, services, and for both patients and providers to select services and procedures that have any possibility of a marginal positive result, even if the cost is vastly out of proportion to the possible benefit. Further, economically speaking, the patient and the payer (whether the government or private insurance co...
That Game of Thrones article is really interesting! I hadn't really noticed the banking stuff in the books as much, but I like what they're doing with it in the show.
ReplyDeleteI love the curtness of all the bbc articles. They can never manage to fit more than a few lines into a paragraph. The bionic arm stuff is really neat, though. We talked about that a fair bit in my bioethics class.
It's funny - I really agree. In retrospect, the stuff about the Iron Bank was prominent in the books, but it really stands out in the show.
DeleteI agree about the BBC. Flowery they are not. The arm is cool as hell. They are also working on direct neural interfaces, so we are really damn close to true bionics.