Word: aetna
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...didn't matter that he was in his company's own backyard. When Aetna's new chairman, William H. Donaldson, approached the podium at the annual meeting of the Connecticut State Medical Society last month, he didn't expect a warm welcome. The audience was packed with his firm's sworn enemies, doctors who view the $26 billion-a-year health-care giant as the poster child for all that ails managed care, from draconian cost controls and reams of paperwork to heavy-handed negotiating tactics. Last fall the organization lobbied the state attorney general to investigate Aetna's allegedly...
...this day, though, Donaldson, a founder of the investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and a former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, was out to present Aetna's new bedside manner. "In response to a real market need, we heartily embraced managed care," he told the crowd. "But there was a price, in terms of too many restrictions and too much process that have grown increasingly unpopular. There are those who say the pendulum has swung too far. I agree...
...longer, he claimed, would Aetna U.S. Healthcare require Connecticut doctors to participate in all its plans, from HMO and Medicare to more flexible preferred-provider organizations (PPO); physicians with 100 or fewer HMO members would now be paid for each patient they saw, rather than with a flat, monthly rate under the hated system known as capitation, which in practice compelled doctors to ration care if they wanted to make any money. And patients with chronic conditions would now be able to use specialists as their primary-care physicians...
...limelight to the cause, including NYPD Blue star Dennis Franz, whose father died of colon cancer; St. Louis Cardinal Eric Davis, whose colon cancer was diagnosed when he was 35; and TV's Judge Judy, who lost her mother to the disease. The cash is coming from corporate sponsors. Aetna US Healthcare and others have pledged a total of $10 million, and another $10 million is due from the entertainment industry. But what gets people's attention--and gets them in for a checkup--is the glow from all those stars...
...panel discussion last night interspersed with a plethora of sometimes-bizarre metaphors, Harvard Law School Lecturer Jonathan L. Zittrain and AETNA Professor of Public Policy Frederic Michael Scherer argued both sides of the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit...