Editorial Board
The Crawling Pace of Doctor-Payment Reform
The government's latest pilot project is a reasonable idea. So were the last 60 or so.
Medicine has come a long way. Sort of.
Photographer: George Marks/Retrofile/Getty ImagesPaying doctors a fee for each service they provide gives them incentive to offer the maximum number of treatments, as well as pay less attention to how well patients recover. This is why the Barack Obama administration -- and just about everyone else -- wants to change the way doctors get paid.
But as the administration's latest step away from the fee-for-service model illustrates, it's doing too little, too slowly to accomplish the change that's needed.