title: A proposal to reroute and reform the healthcare money trail.
abstract: Without fundamental changes healthcare costs will continue to accelerate faster than the gross domestic product while consuming larger portions of individual and corporate incomes. Although the problems are widely acknowledged, we believe that there is an underappreciated defect driving these undesirable events. The essence of that defect is that the major portion of the money is outside the control of the patients and competitive pricing is outside the control of the providers. We propose that the patients have virtual, dynamically allocated, evidence-based budgets grounded on their medical conditions and the patients authorize the transfer of funds to the providers while the providers compete on quality and price. Furthermore, we advocate all funding of healthcare be via taxes linked to expenditures to replace and reduce the total healthcare "premiums" and decouple health care from employment as it is archaic and hinders employment. This proposal reassigns the control of money from the government and special interest groups and returns it to the control of the patients.
authors.affiliation: General Surgeon, Part Owner, Muskegon Surgical Associates, Muskegon, Michigan 49444-1891.
authors.forename: James J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Rice
authors.affiliation: Administrator, Muskegon Surgical Associates, Muskegon, Michigan 49444-1891. Electronic address: dennis.harris@msapc.com.
authors.forename: Dennis W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Harris
mesh_terms: D017048:Health Care Costs; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000191:economics*; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics; D058991:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; D015895:Relative Value Scales; D012941:Social Responsibility; D014481:United States
keywords: Affordable care act; Health insurance; Healthcare financing; Healthcare reform; Physician reimbursement; Responsibility verses control