Internet-based online auctions provide unprecedented opportunities for sellers to submit shill bids. Shill bidding increases the seller’s expected utility but deceives buyers and damages auctioneers’ reputation. Because the anonymity of the Internet makes it difficult to catch shill bidders through statistical analysis or encryption, we suggest that the most effective approach is to make it une...

Three key research questions are identified and analyzed in this article. First is an investigation of whether Medicare already pays physicians using de facto fee schedules. Evidence from South Carolina suggests not. Second is an evaluation of the physician procedures and specialties likely to be affected by imposition of a Medicare fee schedule. Medical visits are identified as especially susc...

In 2009, the methods for paying SHI-affiliated physicians in ambulatory care were changed. The era of capitation fees and strict budgeting is over. GPs and specialists are now paid on a capped fee-for-service basis, with a payment ceiling that is set for each doctor and adjusted for specialization, the number of cases and patient age. Instead of a floating-point fee schedule, a fee schedule wit...

Medical expenditures in workers' compensation programs have been subjected to few cost containment strategies. As workers' compensation costs have escalated, however, increasing attention is being given to the role of medical fee schedules in containing the prices of medical services. To this end, we develop a model for estimating the potential cost savings from implementing medical fee schedul...

This major final rule with comment period addresses changes to the physician fee schedule, clinical laboratory fee schedule, and other Medicare Part B payment policies to ensure that our payment systems are updated to reflect changes in medical practice and the relative value of services. This final rule with comment period also includes a discussion in the Supplementary Information regarding v...

We evaluate the introduction of a reimbursement schedule for self-employed mental health care providers in the Netherlands in 2008. The reimbursement schedule follows a discontinuous discrete step function-once the provider has passed a treatment duration threshold the fee is flat until a next threshold is reached. We use administrative mental health care data of the total Dutch population from...

The 1989 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA 89) included physician payment reform, part of which was a limit on balanced billing. The provision limiting charges was implemented in 1991. Under this reform, physicians who did not accept Medicare assignment were prohibited from billing Medicare beneficiaries more than 140 percent of the prevailing charge for evaluation and management services...