Blame for increased medical costs is getting tossed around like a political football. Those deeply entrenched into the system are pointing their finger at "the other" party to shift responsibility. This reminds one of when CMS in 1980 urged the passage of the Medical Secondary Payer Act.
As this process continues, ultimately the US Government will be the final authority as Medicare ultimately rules the medical billing field and outcome based medicine seems to be the new goal.
Workers' Compensation system will ultimate adapt or be subsumed by the Medicare protocols in one fashion or another. Special interests will have little opportunity to cut out their specialized markets.
Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org
In a study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Mayo Clinic researchers surveyed more than 2,500 doctors to assess their views of different approaches to rein in the nation’s health care costs. The doctors were randomly selected from an American Medical Association database.
When it comes to controlling the country’s health care costs, doctors point their fingers at lawyers, insurance companies, drug makers and hospitals. But well over half acknowledge they have at least some responsibility as stewards of health care resources.Based on their findings, 59 percent of doctors believed they have some responsibility in holding down health care costs. Only 36 percent thought they have a major role.
More than half of doctors, however, said each of five other groups carry “major responsibility:” trial lawyers, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and patients.
“What physicians are trying to tell us is that they don’t see themselves as necessarily any more responsible for health care costs than all of those stakeholders,” said Dr. Jon Tilburt, an associate professor at the Mayo Clinic and the study’s lead author. “They see themselves as a contributor, not a main contributor,” he added.
When asked about options to reduce health care costs, most doctors viewed efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of care most favorably. For example, 98 percent...
