SHORT CUTS
Short Cuts
June 30, 1997
less than 1 minute read
HMOs on the way out? With a few exceptions, such as Kaiser Permanente, "health plans are going to go away because they are just repackagers," predicts Harold Luft, director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. Choosing a health plan has become like deciding whether to buy your brand of detergent at A&P or Safeway, he says.
Not so fast . . . says Larry Leisure, managing partner of of Anderson Consulting’s San Francisco office. Health plans realize they have to adjust to a new environment, which means doing a better job of communicating with consumers. "Medical groups are awful at this."
Just don’t call me provider—Call me doc, call me self-righteous or call me a windbag, but don’t call me a provider writes a California internist in a June 9 Newsweek column. The word "implies an interchangeability that does not correspond to reality," he says. "I would wager that few of the insurance company executives promoting the provider idea go see a provider themselves. . . . No, they’ll visit a physician, and the best damn one they can find."
. . . And, don’t call purchasing groups HIPCs either—To emphasize their voluntary nature—and disassociate them further from the cooperatives called for in President Clinton’s much-bashed plan—the Academy of Healthplan Purchasing Cooperatives has changed its name. The new handle: Academy of Consumer-Choice Health Purchasing Groups. "It’s not perfect, acknowledges the organization’s chief Richard Curtis, "but it’s better than anything else we’ve come up with."
SHORT CUTS
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