Opinion: Determining the level of payments in healthcare

In my previous post, I presented the following menu of payment systems for healthcare and discussed the various bases (the columns in the chart) upon which payment could be made. Now I'd like to discuss the rows in this chart—the methods by which the level of payments are determined. Tax-financed public insurance programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare—could be folded into that approach by delegating the tasks of buying health care and claims processing to private insurers, as is now done with private Medicare Advantage plans and Medicaid managed care plans.