For years we have been telling people that “discounts” are meaningless because the charges used to calculate those discounts are not valid or reliable measures of anything. Now, you don’t have to take our word for it. Medicare has proven it. Any plan that uses “discounts” as their basis for comparing payment levels is on a fool’s errand. There are far better options but first the myth of “discounts” has to be rejected.

Once upon a time in the early days of PPOs this may have worked. But now, providers have so gamed how they set charges (and national payers have encouraged this practice) that “discounts off charges” are now simply a means for providers to get paid whatever they want.

Learn more through this article from The New York Times.