Decatur doctor champions preventive care

DECATUR, Ala. (AP) - Many of the failures of an ailing U.S. health care system are symptoms of the low value that the system places on primary care physicians, Dr. Scott Anderson believes. Anderson sees a problem in a system that pays cardiologists five times as much as it pays the primary care providers who could have prevented the patient from needing a cardiologist. He puzzles over a system that awards him - he is a primary care physician - more profit if his patients are hospitalized than if his preventive care makes hospitalization unnecessary. He is baffled by a system that reimburses the enormous costs of treating lung cancer and diabetes, but refuses to reimburse the cost of smoking cessation and weight-control programs. "For too long, the medical system in this country has been a fix-it-after-it-happens system,"... [read full story]