Reading the tea leaves: Managed care’s demise
Proponents of managed care strategies of the 1990s are in retreat, according to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Although managed care health plans helped keep health care costs down during the 1990s, the article says, managed care’s restrictions infuriated doctors and patients. Changes including a shift away from tight physician panels and utilization reviews are creating a new culture of health care consumerism, says James Robinson, an associate professor of health economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Robinson’s article, "The end of managed care," examines the shift of employers, insurers and physicians, and the emergence of the consumer as the central decision-maker in U.S. health care. Robinson writes that instead of attempting to control health care coverage and costs, employers are providing information and incentives to help individuals make their own trade-offs between health care cost and quality. For more, go to jama.ama-assn.org/.
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