As I've been able to understand, there seem to be three types of payment systems. The Medicare Part D prescription drug plan uses the one where you just pay whatever the sticker price the companies charge. The rest of Medicare I believe mostly behaves in the opposite way, where the government specifies what prices they will pay and hospitals just have to take it. The middle ground is the "negotiated rates" strategy, where the two sides come to some sort of agreement. I don't know if there are governmental health bureaucracies that operate on this payment scheme, but I believe it's what's being proposed for the public option. (Needless to say, I believe this is how almost all private insurance companies operate.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-11-20 04:00 am (UTC)