In the 1980s, the United States healthcare system was at a crossroads in understanding how to value and pay for professionals services performed by healthcare providers such as physicians. To help understand this, through a grant, the U.S. government engaged Harvard University with the task. At this point, Dr. William Hsiao enters the picture and forever changes the healthcare landscape. William C. Hsiao is an American economist, is the K.T. Li Research Professor of Economics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. He is internationally recognized for his work on health care financing and social insurance.

Among his many contributions to the fields of health care economics, policy, and social insurance was a landmark study called the Resource-Based Relative Value Study or RBRVS which examined the United States system of reimbursing physicians for medical services. RBRVS led to a series of articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the first times the prestigious journal had devoted an entire issue to articles on one subject. RBRVS led to a revolutionary reordering of physician reimbursement payments under Medicare Part B which was passed by Congress and signed into law in 1989. Today's episode sheds light on this fascinating history.