Building a Healthcare System from Scratch, Part 2: Parties

In Part 1, I began explaining the Healthcare Incentives Framework by enumerating the five jobs of a healthcare system:

1. Treatment
2. Cost-effective prevention
3. Cost-saving prevention
4. Risk pooling
5. Equitable access

This time, I will look at which parties in a healthcare system have financial incentives to perform those jobs.

First, what are the different parties involved in providing services in a healthcare system? It’s not that complicated. There are providers. And there are insurers, which includes not only insurance companies but also large employers who are acting as the insurance company for their employees. And there’s also government, which is potentially available to step in and assist in fulfilling any of the jobs that wouldn’t otherwise be adequately fulfilled just strictly based on financial incentives.

Taking each problem one by one, let’s look at who has an incentive to fulfill them:

Treatment. Providers get paid for doing this, so it’s an easy one.

Cost-effective prevention. Again, providers have an incentive to do this because they get paid for performing the service. The problem is, patients are often unwilling to spend money on things that won’t benefit them immediately. We’re all a little short-sighted now and then. So this is a case where government intervention may be warranted, such as making a policy that all insurers need to cover certain cost-effective prevention services without a copay.

Cost-saving prevention. Providers are the ones getting paid to actually perform the services, but really it’s the insurer that stands to gain when a patient gets a service that ends up saving a lot more money down the road by preventing future care episodes. This assumes insurers have long enough time horizons to reap the benefits (long-term savings) of investing in cost-saving prevention.

Risk pooling. Again, this one is straightforward. Insurers get compensated for doing this one.

Equitable access. Do insurers or providers have a financial incentive to deliver care to people who cannot afford it? No. They definitely have cultural incentives to do this, but not financial incentives. So, if society believes that the cultural incentives are not enough to promote sufficient care provision to those who cannot afford it otherwise, this would be another potential role for government to somehow intervene.

In Part 3, I will write about how these parties can have incentives not just to fulfill those jobs but to maximize the value they deliver when fulfilling them. Bear with me–the utility of the framework isn’t quite obvious yet, but it will come together quickly.