Word: hmos
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...AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION is growing feverish about them. A number of physicians who have joined up have found them toxic to their employment prospects. And many patient-clients are questioning the candor of their medical guidance. They are for-profit health-management organizations (HMOs). The aggravating agent is a clause in many HMO contracts, variously described by critics as a "loyalty oath" and a "gag rule," that forbids doctors to reveal certain sorts of information, including treatment options, to anyone, including their patients. The A.M.A. House of Delegates has ruled that such restrictions "are not in the best interests...
...least one doctor has been even more outspoken about the conflict between the Hippocratic oath and the cost-controlling imperatives of the HMOs. David Himmelstein, 45, an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School and a persistent critic of for-profit HMOs, signed on a year ago with U.S. Healthcare, a $2.9 billion behemoth whose 65,000 doctors and 2.3 million members make it the largest HMO on the East Coast...
...meeting of the National Managed Health Care Congress, Himmelstein gave a presentation during which he showed slides of, among other things, what he called the "gag clause" in his U.S. Healthcare contract. Two weeks later, he took his complaints to the Donahue show and said, "one of the HMOs that I practice in tells me I can't tell my patients if there's something wrong [with what] the HMO insists...
Moreover, the changes proposed by the Republicans for Medicare reform are fully justified by the circumstances. Senior citizens should be encouraged to join HMOs just like many of the tax-payers who subsidize their medical insurance...
...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...