Optimizing Physician Payment for a Single-Payer Healthcare System.

Current forms of payment of independent physicians in U.S. health care may incentivize more care (fee-for-service) or less care (capitation), be inequitable across specialties (resource-based relative value scale [RBRVS]), and distract from clinical care (value-based payments [VBP]).

Access to care: the physician's perspective.

Private practice physicians in Hawaii were surveyed to better understand their impressions of different insurance plans and their willingness to care for patients with those plans. Physician experiences and perspectives were investigated in regard to reimbursement, formulary limitations, pre-authorizations, specialty referrals, responsiveness to problems, and patient knowledge of their plans. The willingness of physicians to accept new patients from specific insurance company programs clearly correlated with the difficulties and limitations physicians perceive in working with the companies (p<0.

A better idea for United States health care--the balanced choice proposal.

This article introduces a promising new health care financing proposal for physician payment called Balanced Choice. It summarizes the implications of health care economics and current well-publicized health care reform proposals, each of which is problematic for physicians and their patients. The Balanced Choice proposal is for an integrated two-tier national system, which has an economically efficient universal plan similar to single-payer, but with an option for enhanced services using market forces at the doctor-patient level to manage care.