Word: hmos
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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...
...could be the Democratic reply line to the G.O.P.'s Medicare reforms sketched out last week by House Speaker Gingrich. Promising to "preserve, protect and strengthen'' the system, he offered a menu of proposals that includes HMOS, personal health-care accounts and a new form of doctor- and hospital-provided coverage. His plan would also raise premiums much faster than anything the Democrats have in mind. Even after outlining it, Republicans didn't have numbers to show how it would achieve $270 billion in savings over seven years. And much of those savings are targeted by Republicans...
...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...