PAYING DOCTORS NOT TO TREAT PATIENTS? Yes, but it’s not from evil profit-seeking HMOs in America, but Britain’s National Health Service:

Dozens of incentive schemes have been uncovered which allow GPs to profit by slashing the number of patients they refer for hospital care. Under one scheme, GPs stand to gain £59 for every patient not referred to hospital, if they cut an average referral rate by between two and eight per cent. Torbay care trust in Devon will pay up to £15,000 to the average-sized GP practice if it hits a swathe of targets, including reducing hospital referrals. . . .

A leading surgeon said that patients’ cancers had already gone undiagnosed after they were denied specialist care under two such “referral management” schemes. . . .

He said: “I recently encountered two cases in which patients referred to physiotherapists later turned out to have a malignant tumour. If they had been sent to a consultant the outcome may have been very different.

It’s not just the for-profit sector that can sacrifice patient welfare for money. It’s just that when the government does it, they don’t get the same kind of criticism.