Why Don’t We Pay Doctors Fairly?

It’s really simple.  We don’t pay primary care doctors fairly because we spend too much on health care and insurers (payers) have decided that the most effective way to control medical costs is to reduce fees paid to doctors and other providers.  The other principal method is to deny payment or coverage.

Knowing this, it is relatively easy to understand why doctors, in the majority, report that they are dissatisfied with their careers.

In my view, the failure to pay doctors fairly results from a failure of imagination.  Insurers simply cannot see the way to controlling medical costs except on the backs of doctors and policyholders.  There is an alternative, however, that has worked in the past and can work again if applied uniformely across the country.  It is a managed medical network.

To be effective, the medical network must pay providers fairly.  This means that the fees paid must be fair and the medical community must be the arbiters of care… not the payers.  With this system in place, we can ask the health care providers to cooperate in controlling utilization and over treatment.  Bringing over treatment under control can reduce total medical costs by more than $600 billion per year. Paying doctors fairly is a small price to pay for the resultant savings. In addition, by eliminating waste in health care costs, we can help ensure that care will be appropriate.  Thus, the patient benefits.