Law firms are laying off lawyers as never before and questioning the industry's traditional unit of payment, the billable hour.
Beer was thought to be so important in many bygone civilizations that the Code of Urukagina, often cited as the first legal code, even prescribed it as a central unit of payment and penance.
'Currency' is the unit of payment.
For commissioners, the incentive effects of financial payments and penalties upon providers depends on: 1. how resource-dependent the provider is upon the commissioner 2. how much discretion the commissioner has to decide what services to finance, what unit of payment (per case, per diem etc).
Local adaptations or variants of diagnosis related groups (DRGs) have been adopted as the unit of payments to hospitals in many health systems.
Then, perhaps a couple of decades after the customs union is formed, its members consider creating a true monetary union with a common currency - the Eurasian ruble? - that can be used as a unit of account, means of payment and store of value.
Unification is "imperative to guarantee the re-establishment of the Cuban peso's value and its role as money, that is as a unit of accounting, means of payment and savings", it said.
Then, as now, the works functioned in the world as handmade units of money, accepted in payment of debts.
In my next post, I shall examine the alternative methods of determining the level of payment per unit of whatever base for payment is chosen.
Data from the USA reveal the downside of a private funded healthcare system, with overtreatment due to payment for units of service, and financial incentives that reward inefficiency such as payment for complications and re-admissions.
This payment scheme would transition from higher monetary payments per hectare per year for the first units of land invested, to lower payments per hectare per year for additional units of land invested; however, as payments per hectare decrease, monetary payments would be supplemented with non-financial rewards.
