Paying the Doctor: Systems of Remuneration and their Effects, by William A. Glaser. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970, 323 pp., $10.00

Abstract

From his personal studies, Glaser analyzes the establishment and summarizes the methods of paying doctors in 16 European countries that have national health insurance programs. Unfortunately, to quote Glaser, "a country's current payment system under its public medical services is usually the arrangement it had before the services were created.

. . . Most payment systems in public schemes are simply those inherited from prior practice, since the doctors would be disturbed by changes. Most payment procedures under ‘socialized medicine’ are simply more bureaucratized versions of the methods that were used and often even invented by the doctors under earlier private practice."