#1 Dinosaur looks at potential implications for Medicare’s recent P4P decisions:

How long before Medicare refuses to pay for an appendectomy if the pathology is negative? If the appendix was normal, then it didn’t need to come out, right? What about a negative breast biopsy, or any kind of exploratory surgery that doesn’t yield positive pathological findings? Couldn’t a cardiac catheterization that showed clean coronaries be considered “unnecessary”?

What about imaging? Billions of dollars spent annually on diagnostic imaging means tremendous opportunities for reigning in costs by refusing to pay for studies that are normal. No brain tumor or other abnormality found on that MRI? Then why should we pay for it?