Word: health
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...skimpy insurance umbrella under which the ghetto poor live does not mean that needy patients must sometimes forego care; there is a more subtle and more debilitating disadvantage as well. Jerome Pollack, executive director of the Med School's health plan, said last week that "since the supply of doctors here is limited, the poor actually have to compete with the affluent for available care. In effect, private insurance may deprive low-income areas of care by attracting doctors into the well-insured areas...
...overt aim of the Med School's plan is to help those medically-deprived poor patients. By the time the plan reaches its full enrollment in 1971, some 6000 people from the Mission Hill area should be signed up to get Harvard Health Plan care...
...will all come from Medicaid rolls, and their fees for the Harvard Health Plan will be paid by the government. No one will be forced to switch to Harvard coverage; people on Medicaid will be allowed to choose which plan they want to join. Those who are able to get into the health plan will get virtually all their care for free. There may still be a $1 charge for doctor visits, but many of the gaping holes in Medicaid coverage will be filled...
Pollack and his staff are also tailoring a number of the health plan's tactics to meet the special needs of the poor. Staffs of recruiters will travel through Mission Hill neighborhoods and encourage people to come in for check-ups and preventive care...
...major health problem of poor people, Pollack says, is that they are "under-utilizers of maintenance and prevention, and over-utilizers of emergency treatment." By luring needy patients in for more prevention--and by using the health plan's emphasis on out-patient treatment -- the Harvard center in Mission Hill will offer the poor a kind of medical assistance much different from the mere doles that Medicaid and Medicare pass...