Lifeline from UnitedHealth?

UnitedHealth wants to have at least 50% of its network under value-based contracting by 2015.  How does that sound?  Good for them.  We also have another made-up political term (please see my other blogs about P4P traps) called “value-based contracting”  .   Somehow our leaders believe this is a wonderful thing.   Here was a quote from Lisa Bielamowicz, MD, a managing director and national physician practice leader for The Advisory Board Co., a research, consulting and technology firm serving academic and health care organizations, at the end of this American Medical News article:

Where health plans are simply paying more to primary care physicians in lieu of complicated risk arrangements or pay-for-performance programs, she said, the insurers are extending a financial “lifeline” to doctors under financial distress. Those straightforward boosts in pay are likely to be replaced by arrangements that involve physicians taking on risk.

 In other words, they are taking advantage of our pitiful pay situation in order to get us to buy in.  Do you see the words “replaced” and “risk”?   That is called bait-and-switch.   What did P.T. Barnum allegedly say?