Money and Medicine: Indivisible and Irreconcilable

Going forward, physician reimbursement will be altered by the anticipated dismantling of the “fee-for-volume” payment system and its substitution with “fee-for-value” alternatives [46]. Whether or not a momentous alteration of the economic ground rules on this scale will in effect change hearts and minds remains doubtful. More than likely, money and medicine will remain both indivisible and irreconcilable for some time to come. Few expect otherwise.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/opinion/the-myth-of-the-medical-device-tax.html?hp&_r=2&

The Myth of the Medical-Device Tax
By TOPHER SPIRO
Published: October 16, 2013

IN the last few days of negotiations in Congress, repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices emerged as a key Republican demand. The medical-device industry waged an intense lobbying campaign — even garnering the support of many Democrats who favored the law — arguing that the tax would stifle innovation and increase health care costs.

This argument is doubly disingenuous. Not only can the medical-device industry easily afford the tax without compromising innovation, but the industry’s enormous profits are a result of anticompetitive practices that themselves drive up medical-device costs unnecessarily. The tax is a distraction from reforms to the industry that are urgently needed to lower health care costs.