Medical costs are a major cost to the nation’s workers’ compensation system. Trying to cap them by schedules is a problem. What type of schedule becomes a political football, sometimes causing chaos. The free market certainly has it advantage though. Employee should as the right to choose their doctor and doctors should be flexible to charge the “going rate” for their communities. NJ operates without a fee schedule, but lacks the free selection component. Access and free choice will go along way to balancing out costs. Demand for participation will increase and employers and workers will both be winners. Today's post is shared from http://daviddepaolo.blogspot.com .
And it isn’t surprising that the Workers’ Competition Research Institute reported Thursday that states without medical fee schedules in their workers’ compensation systems have seen the most rapid increases in prices for outpatient hospital and professional services, while states with fee schedules based on fixed amounts generally fared better.
"States without fee schedules saw faster price growth than states with fee schedules, and, for states with charge-based fee schedules, we saw prices for hospital outpatient services growing faster than states with fixed prices," said Rebecca Yang, the author of WCRI's 2nd Edition of its Outpatient Cost Index and the Fifth Edition of its Medical Price Index for Workers' Compensation, in a webinar yesterday. ... |
