Opinion: Health professionals will respond to incentives, if we only let them

Since World War II it has slowly evolved into not one but at least three wholly separate entities--each with different infrastructures and different sets of perverse incentives for hospitals, doctors, and other providers. This nutty system of finance is the reason that healthcare expenses are swallowing the U.S. economy (and federal and state budgets), and that healthcare is our biggest domestic policy issue. The healthcare profession has always been quite honorable, but the reality is that these professionals—physicians, nurses, hospital administrators alike—aren't immune to financial incentives, and the incentives created by our current system are completely out of whack.