Watch the following Khan Academy Videos:
Module 1: Health care system overview 8 minutes
Explains how patients/populations, providers, and payors interact. Introduces government insurance, direct payment of patient to doctor, HMOs and PPOs. Explains the rationale for insurance to mitigate risk and discusses the need to manage “moral hazard” as well as over-utilization of services when not directly responsible for payment.
Module 2: Paying doctors 12 minutes
Defines FFS, capitation and salary. Describes the lack of cost accountability to patients and providers in the third party payor system. Describes issues with capitation with particular attention on “cherry picking” or patient shifting.
Module 3: Medicare overview 16 minutes
Introduces Medicare and Medicaid. Defines populations covered for Medicare (Elderly/ALS/ESRD) and Medicaid (low income) as well as funding source (Federal Government for Medicare and combined Federal and State for Medicaid). Defines Secretary of HHS and CMS (Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services). Describes Medicare parts A-D.