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“Under an all-payer system, all private and public insurance programs in a region would pay all physicians, hospitals, and other providers of health care on the basis of a uniform fee schedule common to all payers, and the cost of uncompensated care rendered to uninsured patients would be covered by a separate fund.”

Source: Uwe E. Reinhardt. The Many Different Prices Paid To Providers And The Flawed Theory Of Cost Shifting: Is It Time For A More Rational All-Payer System? Health Affairs 2011 30:11, 2125-2133.

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“Maryland has long operated such a system for hospitals.² Other states, notably New Jersey, introduced such a system in the 1970s for hospitals as well but subsequently abandoned it for a more market-based determination of hospital prices.³

“Several European health systems, including those of Germany⁴ and Switzerland,^5,6 have long used an all-payer approach on a regional basis for physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical products, and various other providers of health care.

“Even if the cost-shift theory were valid only in a few market areas,⁷ an all-payer system could do much to remove the enormous complexity and the associated high administrative costs of the pervasive price discrimination characterizing US health care now. (Price discrimination means that different customers pay a given seller different prices for the same good or service. It can occur whenever sellers can segment their markets into groups of customers with differing price responsiveness.)”

Source: Uwe E. Reinhardt. The Many Different Prices Paid To Providers And The Flawed Theory Of Cost Shifting: Is It Time For A More Rational All-Payer System? Health Affairs 2011 30:11, 2125-2133.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

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Page last updated April 7, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.