> There is almost no fraud because the doctor has no real financial incentive to overtreat me
The vast majority of healthcare fraud does not come from corrupt dentists convincing you to get root canals you don't need.
The largest source is billing for services not rendered.
That is: some provider just makes up that you came to see them and charges the insurance company and you don't even know about it.
This is a non-trivial problem to solve.
Even in the NHS in the UK - where the entire system, including the providers, are public - there is STILL a large billing for services not rendered problem!
This seems trivially solvable. In BC, Canada, I had an old doctor renew a prescription over the phone. This must have triggered a fraud alert because my address was now in a different health management district. They sent me an automatic notice asking me to confirm that I had been helped by that doctor at that time. I believe I can also log onto a provincial portal and see activity related to my medical care.
Seems like a pretty low cost way to ensure that no fraud is happening. Set up triggers for confirmation like doctors treating people who don't live nearby, treating people who are concurrently seeing other doctors, or any number of other known fraud alerts, and follow up.
Since private practice isn't really allowed here, getting removed from the provincial insurance program means a career death sentence, so I think that it just isn't that big of a problem anyway.
I'm not a citizen of the UK so I can only speculate from a poorly informed position but I would imagine that it has to do with the starve the beast tactics that are being used to weaken the NHS to make it more susceptible to privatization.
The vast majority of healthcare fraud does not come from corrupt dentists convincing you to get root canals you don't need.
The largest source is billing for services not rendered.
That is: some provider just makes up that you came to see them and charges the insurance company and you don't even know about it.
This is a non-trivial problem to solve.
Even in the NHS in the UK - where the entire system, including the providers, are public - there is STILL a large billing for services not rendered problem!