Focusing on cures

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led consortium is finalizing pilot programs that are intended to serve as models for overcoming two major hurdles to implementing performance-based contracts for curative therapies in the United States. The goal is to test a series of financial engineering concepts the consortium calls “precision financing.”

One pilot seeks to make multiyear performance-based annuity contracts portable, so they can be handed off when patients who are receiving potentially curative therapies switch insurance companies. ...