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Scrap Medicare Fee-For-Service System, Doctor Says

Posted on July 24, 2008

They way Medicare pays doctors encourages excessive testing and discourages spending time with patients, a doctor argues today on the New York Times op-ed page.The fee-for-service system reimburses doctors not only for their time, but also for overhead which includes the costs of expensive machines used to run tests such as CT scans. This is why doctors who own their own imaging equipment order far more scans than doctors who refer patients elsewhere for scans, argues the author, Peter B. Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He writes:Any first-year business school student can s...

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