Answer to all-payer rates: competing conversion factors

Article Abstract:

Proposed government-mandated 'all-payer' physician fees would be a major problem for the US healthcare industry. Instead, physicians and insurers should adopt fee and payment schedules based on Medicare's resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS). Under an American Society of Internal Medicine proposal, each physician and insurer would calculate conversion factors to convert the RBRVS to a fee or payment schedule. Each physician and payer would be required to openly publish their conversion factors. Hence, health care consumers would be free to choose physicians with the lowest fee conversion factors and insurers with the highest payment conversion factors. The competitive forces of the free market would bring down health care costs through this method.

Innovations, Prices and rates, Health care industry, Column, Social policy, Medical fees, Relative value scale payment systems (Medical care), American Society of Internal Medicine

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Lifetime cost of human immunodeficiency virus-related health care

Article Abstract:

Australian researchers estimate that the lifetime cost of treating HIV-infected patients in 1992-1993 ranged from $70,000 to $93,000. This is substantially less than the estimated cost in the US, which was $119,000 in one published study. However, the US study did not discount for future costs. When the US data are discounted, the lifetime cost is 17% lower, at $74,900. Costs in Australia may be higher because most Australians are covered by publicly funded health insurance, whereas many American patients may go untreated.

Health aspects, Australia, Economic aspects, HIV infection, HIV infections

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Transplant survival rates up; waiting list also increasing

Article Abstract:

The 1996 report of the US Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network indicates that the survival rate of patients who receive organ transplants is increasing. The report's other major finding is that the number of people waiting for transplants is growing and further outstripping the supply of donor organs.

Statistics, Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc., Organ transplantation, Tissue transplantation, Transplantation, Donation of organs, tissues, etc., Tissue donation

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