Endless testing, unnecessary treatment and countless expensive procedures ensued.
In the US, a fee-for-service model encourages high volume and expensive procedures.
The requirement explicitly excludes a few very expensive procedures, like in vitro fertilization and vasectomy reversal.
Not only are such tests expensive, but they can lead to more, sometimes pointless, expensive procedures.
The Dartmouth Atlas tends to rate poorly hospitals that provide lots of expensive procedures.
Rationing of expensive procedures under either system, whether fee-for-service or prospective, will no doubt be similarly declaimed.
During the final year of patients' lives, I've seen the irrational use of very expensive procedures, with no accruing benefit.
Complicating the issue are other similarly expensive procedures that are on the horizon or have been approved recently.
Our health care "system" delivers exactly what we seemingly have asked of it: greater numbers of more expensive procedures.
In a phone interview, Mr. Pyott said more expensive procedures like breast implants had been harder hit than treatments like cosmetic injections.
Thailand's experience clearly shows how the need for more expensive procedures may go down sharply with fuller coverage of preventive care and early intervention.
