Your customized headlines for Sun, Mar 25, 2012

In February 2009, Michael Zucker told a group of high-paid surgeons something they did not want to hear: The way they earned a salary was about to change.

Zucker is the chief development officer at Baptist Health System, a five-hospital network in San Antonio. For 37 common surgeries, such as hip replacements and pacemaker implants, it would soon collect "bundled" Medicare payments. Traditionally, hospitals and doctors had collected separate fees for each step of such procedures; now they would get a lump sum for treating everything related to the patient's condition.

I'm not a huge football fan, but I have been following the bounty scandal that has hit the New Orleans Saints.

The NFL suspended Saints head coach Sean Payton, General Manager Mickey Loomis and former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams for participating in a pay-for-performance system that gave cash awards to players who hit opposing players hard enough to knock them out of a game or cause them to be helped off the field. The players most heavily involved in the bounty scheme face potential disciplinary action.

It's a bedrock principle of economics: Incentives matter. You'll find it in the first chapter of any introductory textbook. And it is the animating principle of Republican economic policy, as we were reminded last week by Rep. Paul Ryan when he unveiled the latest House Republican budget.

SEOUL — Five years ago, South Korea mapped out a plan to transform its education system into the world's most cutting-edge. The country would turn itself into a "knowledge powerhouse," one government report declared, breeding students "equipped for the future." These students would have little use for the bulky textbooks familiar to their parents. Their textbooks would be digital, accessible on any screen of their choosing. Their backpacks would be much lighter.

My MOI (moment of insight) was out to lunch. It happens. When it happens, I have nothing to do except relax until it comes back.

I relax by driving, preferably along westbound Interstate 66 and southbound Interstate 80 in and through Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. They are beautiful stretches of road, especially in the early spring in a fine automobile.

PARIS — More than 30,000 cheering supporters gathered at the Bastille, the icon of the French Revolution, to cheer Jean-Luc Melenchon as he shouted out his promises of a new dawn. He will lead them into another insurrection, he pledged, waving his arms and laughing in delight, to upend the political system, to rewrite the bourgeois constitution, to bridle the gnomes of predatory capitalism.

My MOI (moment of insight) was out to lunch. It happens. When it happens, I have nothing to do except relax until it comes back.

I relax by driving, preferably along westbound Interstate 66 and southbound Interstate 80 in and through Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. They are beautiful stretches of road, especially in the early spring in a fine automobile.

In February 2009, Michael Zucker told a group of high-paid surgeons something they did not want to hear: The way they earned a salary was about to change.

Zucker is the chief development officer at Baptist Health System, a five-hospital network in San Antonio. For 37 common surgeries, such as hip replacements and pacemaker implants, it would soon collect "bundled" Medicare payments. Traditionally, hospitals and doctors had collected separate fees for each step of such procedures; now they would get a lump sum for treating everything related to the patient's condition.

Most of the biggest changes under Dodd-Frank haven't even taken effect. But Wall Street reform has already prompted banks to change — both to comply with the new law and to make a preemptive strike against it, I explain in a print story today: