Medical economics underwent a major metamorphosis when physicians' principal source of income shifted from the modest means of the average patient to the seemingly limitless insurance funds or tax dollars dispensed by an impersonal third-party bureaucracy. The method of payment resulting from this change has turned out to be a financially unsound approach and a virtual invitation to abuse.BackgroundIn the process of becoming financially dependent on third-party payers, physician lobbyists recognized the likelihood of being locked into a schedule of fixed fees, which they feared would not keep pace with costs and new development. To forestall that problem, . . .
Benson B. Roe (1981) studied this question.