Managed Care and Incentives for Preventive Medicine
Here’s a quick line of reasoning for why a very competitive private healthcare system might be less efficient than, say, good ol’ single payer:
- Managed care assumes that having health insurance served by various competing entities will reduce health care costs by providing incentives for efficiency.
- Preventive care is a major and perhaps the most important source of efficiency in the healthcare system.
- A managed care provider would treat preventive medicine like an investment. Induce a covered person to engage in preventive techniques, and this will reduce costs in the long run for the provider.
- To make the insurance market competitive, people must be able to switch to different health care providers often. Health care providers must be able to compete for patients throughout the life cycle. Otherwise the provider would gain monopoly power and would have reduced incentives to become more efficient.
- A patient which has engaged in a great deal of preventive medicine has a lower expected long run cost of health care than if he did not engage in preventive medicine.
- This person would receive offers for reduced premiums from the other managed care providers after he engaged in preventive medicine, and so he would switch to the other provider.
- As he did this, the “return” on the “investment” in preventive medicine would be wiped out for the patient’s original managed care provider.
- Thus in a competitive environment, preventive medicine will have a very limited return for the managed care provider Since most efficiency gains in the health care system are going to come from preventive medicine, a managed care system will generally forego this method of reducing costs.
What do you think?
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:10 am
I’m not sure I understand step 6. Wouldn’t the person’s current provider also offer a reduced premium, for the same reason?
January 21st, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Managed Care; Anatomy of a Mass Medical Movement. 2000.
The Rise and Fall of Managed Care: A Comprehensve History of a Mass Medical Movement. 2001.
Rise and Fall of Managed Care: History of the Mass Medical Movement. 2002.
“The author documents that despite promises of managed care zealots, we have a sad healthcare landscape of crippled academic medical centers, dissatisfied patients, uninsured, chronically ill and elderly citizens, and demoralized physicians: with NO cost savings. Managed care produced, however, ‘monetarization’ of medicine, multi-million dollar consulting firms, and Wall Street riches. Dr. Smith wisely reminds us that the best way to care for patients is ‘care for the patient.’ It is not too late to rediscover that the most cost effective care is that which is competent and compassionate.”
“Dr. Smith has given us a very readable but chilling chronicle of the rise and fall of the managed care era in medicine, [and] it’s demise in an avalanche of greed and bankruptcy. [The] tragic legacy of this ill-conceived plan: disgruntled patients, uninsured citizens, demoralized physicians, and crippled academic medical centers. All this with the burden of increased costs, as major resource went not to research of patient care, but to administration, regulation, and stockeholders. Fortunately, the public has finally boecome aware of the failure of the mistaken social experiment.”
Since the early 1970s, rising medical costs resulted in a profusion of healthcare plans and criticism of the profession of medicine: a confusing, chaotic, divisive setting for providing medical care. Little or no communication took place between those who purchased medical insurance plans and those who provided medical services—physicians, dentists, hospitals, and other providers. Promotion of managed care plans took on an excited, carnival atmosphere generating promise that a glorious, new era was approaching.
Since doctors order most medical care, managed care proponents emphasized the importance of controlling practices of doctors. They claimed extensive changes were needed, that almost any criticism against the profession of medicine was warranted. Enterprising economists, entrepreneur consultants and a host of others became self-styled experts and advisers to hospitals and businesses over the issue of “cost containment” and invented the imperative “runaway costs.” Accusations leveled against physicians by advocates of managed care were puzzling, disturbing, and frustrating. We were told that “managed care is what’s out there,” “business likes managed care,” and managed care is “here to stay.” The new ethic became marketplace competition, cost containment, prevention, and control.
Although most doctors at one time objected to the idea of managed care, rising sentiment against regular fee-for-service practice eventually took its toll to the point many physicians became convinced that it was up to doctors to make managed care work. Corporate benefits managers at first were opposed to the notion of managed care, but gave in to pressure from corporate management.
Managed care advocates created fear, uncertainty, and division by telling physicians that the only possibility of survival in “changing climate of health care” was to “embrace” managed care. Economists and politicians charging outright criminal activity by all physicians became the norm. Doctors and public were told that a new age had dawned, the old order was out, we had better get on board or be left behind. By declaring managed care an “unassailable truth,” managed care was propelled into a revolution, a mass movement. Yet, physicians who “embraced” managed care found themselves in an ethical and practical bind.
Enthusiasm that led to the managed care mass movement followed the same course as other mass movements—a restructuring of medical care was called for, the old was suddenly outdated, a “crisis” proclaimed, a social transformation declared!
Links:
Wyndham Hall Press, Lima, OH
Nova Science Publishers, Hauppauge, NY
November 28th, 2007 at 9:04 am
The basic tenets of this discussion are obscured by a reliance on identifying seperate and apparently irreconcilable courses of action. This is not however the case.
Health provision is a business and like all businesses, a choice has to be made as to which segment (or segments) the organisation is to target. If multiple segments (ie ‘managed care’ and ‘preventive medicine’) are to be followed then the organisation needs a departmental structure, such as to maximise the business efficiency of each, leading to the greater benefit of the whole organisation.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 am
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April 29th, 2008 at 11:49 am
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