Word: fee
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Still, those savings could mean the difference between national solvency and fiscal catastrophe, so Obama is targeting two major barriers to data-driven medicine. The first is the perverse "fee-for-service" incentives that now plague our health-care system: hospitals get paid more if you stay longer and come back often; doctors get paid more if they do more tests and procedures - and you come back often. More services, more fees. "You've got to follow the money," says former Senator Tom Daschle, Obama's initial choice for health czar. "We reward volume, so that's what...
...first to view so-called micropayments as a potential source of revenue for digital content. Apple's iTunes store showed it was possible to build a billion-dollar business by selling songs for 99 cents each. And, although many analysts doubt publishers can make the switch from free to fee, there is another industry that is currently making a similar transition: online gaming...
...healthy 27% this year, the micropayments submarket will grow by an even more robust 40% to 50%. That's partly because customers seem to prefer not being locked into playing just one or two online games by stiff up-front charges and subscriptions. And, freed from paying a set fee each month, some players actually end up spending more. Four years ago, Shanda Interactive Entertainment, China's biggest online-game developer, ditched subscriptions for the freemium model and turned around its sagging fortunes. Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of London-based social-gaming site Playfish, says micropayments work because online games aren...
...Still, for the long haul, Lockhart thinks it would be a bad move to permanently nationalize the two firms. Instead, he prefers returning them to the private market, perhaps in the form of something close to a public utility that would charge a fee to homeowners or lenders to subsidize lower mortgage rates...
...woes. Among them: insured patients who come to the ED because they can't get in to see or don't have a primary-care physician; very sick patients who end up being "boarded" in EDs for days because of a shortage of open hospital beds; and a fee-for-service health-care system that encourages hospitals to invest not in EDs, which are often money losers, but in high-margin procedures like elective in-patient surgery. (Read "A Health-Care Reality Check Slows Congress...