Over at Pajamas Media, Paul Hsieh discusses how ObamaCare’s “Accountable Care Organizations” incentivize doctors to make choices that aren’t in the patient’s best interest:
Under the ACO system, patients basically become cost centers for hospitals and doctors. ObamaCare … Hence, even if a patient sees a specialist in another city who then orders expensive tests or performs some specialized procedures, those costs will still be “attributedâ€? to his primary ACO physician.
And what will that accomplish?
In theory, this “assignmentâ€? system is supposed to encourage doctors to work together … in practice it also creates tremendous perverse ethical incentives for primary care physicians. If his patient has chest pain and needs to see a cardiologist, should his physician recommend the better but more-expensive expert across town — or steer him towards the cheaper but not-quite-as-good cardiologist in the same ACO?
Most of the physicians I know will do the right thing by the patient. But some percentage of doctors will do what is most cost effective for themselves, regardless of patient need.
Scare ya? It should. Read the rest of the story here.
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