>>>John, John, John!!!
>>>It's arithmetically impossible that that $250K did not add cost that had no value.
>
>Nonsense. If people need care, they need care. The kickbacks are to deliver a bigger share of the pie into the briber's hands. If you have evidence that the briber increased its prices rather than simply basking in the extra business as the article described or that the physician over-ordered: please produce it.
>

Oh, my, John!

The $250K, had it not been kickbacked, could have reduced prices to the consumer.
It was and it didn't.
Therefore the costs are higher than they might have been without the kickback.
There are lots of what if's but the arithmetic is inescapable.

>FWIW, I think you'll find there are lots of businesses where all work is sent to a favored provider in exchange for some value. Builders, accountants, developers and all sorts of people do it all the time and sometimes it definitely drives up cost for the consumer. The difference is that it's illegal in healthcare that is held to a higher standard at least partly because most funding is socialized rather than paid from the user's own pocket. Businessmen and physicians who don't respond appropriately to that and betray the integrity and trust relied upon for the system to work at all, deserve to be jailed.
>
>>>He's going to jail.
>
>As are the physicians. Who you still single out for blame.
>
>>>He told you.
>>>He can't answer that because his people are overwhelmed prosecuting the ones he's already found.
>
>To paraphrase your own style: this silly logic can be applied to any supposition. It's not proof, it's just bias.
>
And therefore it's wrong?
Not knowing it's a bias is a problem but having a robust bias and following it has usually been a good idea for me.

As long as you're paraphrasing me I'll paraphase Walden's hermit - No man ever followed his bias till it misled him.


>>The good news is that more and more physicians are taking salaried positions where they'll have no financial interest in their facility's referral decisions or billing. By your logic, that should reduce cost markedly with physician fingers out of the till and everything will be peachy.
>>Wow!
>>We agree!
>
>LOL. I was being sarcastic: most evidence is that patient choice and satisfaction reduces and costs rise when physicians become clock watchers.

That certainly is a possible outcome but it's not inevitable.
Granted Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg, et al are head and shoulders over most of them,
but in our field, there are some awfully good salaried programmers mixed in with the clock watchers.

And it certainly seems as if the MD's aren't doing much to head it off.
I go to one MD whose office - about 20ft X 50 ft, is one of about 100 similar offices in a one storey medical complex.
Each little office has a waiting room, a LAN, a fax, a phone system, a receptionist and various other gadgets that at least potentially could be shared.
Can't they get together?

On the other hand my toenail clipper joined a group that shares much of that.
He has his own treatment rooms, but the overhead is shared with about a dozen other MD's.
He told me he cut his overhead in half.