Medicare’s big experiment in changing how it pays doctors and hospitals appears to be paying off. A voluntary program started three years ago to reward health-care providers for keeping people healthy rather than delivering more care has saved the federal government more than $380 million, officials announced today.
Health economists and policymakers widely agree that we should pay doctors for keeping people healthy, rather than the current fee-for-service model, in which health-care providers have an incentive to perform more tests and treatments. But changing those incentives is difficult.
