Word: hmos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first independent surveys of the users of Health Maintenance Organizations, CareData Reports of New York has compiled a list of what it says are the best HMOs in the United States. The health plans rated most satisfactory by 10,272 members of 33 different HMOs were: Kaiser Permanente in Connecticut; Aetna Health Plan in greater Cleveland; Cigna Healthplans in Houston; Oxford Health Plans in New Jersey; and Kaiser Permanente in Southern California. Even the best could work on their bedside manner, however. CareData reports that customers who were pleased with their HMOs tended to think the medical care was better...
Competition among HMOs has forced teaching hospitals to cut costs in various ways. For example, one of the hospitals in Santangelo's group is starting to cut specialty training positions...
...Senate plans offer doctors a bouquet of new benefits. They reduce the punitive and pain-and-suffering parts of malpractice awards to a maximum of $250,000. They allow doctors and hospitals to form their own health-care plans, called provider-sponsored networks, so they can compete with existing HMOS and insurance companies. And both proposals revive some currently banned self-referrals, which means, for example, that an orthopedist with an investment in a radiology lab would once again be allowed to send his Medicare patients there for X rays...
While hitting the elderly in the pocketbook, the Republicans hope to offer them a greater choice of medical plans, beyond traditional fee-for-service care and HMOS. Patients could direct government payments to provider-sponsored networks; or to plans created by large organizations like the AFL-CIO for their members; or to private insurance plans. In fact, if patients were to buy low-cost insurance that offered only catastrophic protection, the Republicans would allow them to bank the difference between their insurance premium and the average Medicare payment...
...Republicans like a giant, baleful asterisk. Democrats maintain that when the Congressional Budget Office adds the figures in, they will fall far short of the magic, budget-balancing $270 billion. Critics are especially scornful of Gingrich's claim that $70 billion would be generated merely from seniors voluntarily joining HMOS...