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Essay On Managed Care

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Managed care is a term that has been used widely in and around the United States. A managed care organization can be defined as, “an organization that combines the functions of health insurance, delivery of care, as well as administration” (Legal Dictionary). With all the healthcare reform projects already in place, legislators felt something needed to be done with the way our current health care system is delivered. A managed care organization is put in place to basically provide better health benefits for members and simultaneously reducing the enormous costs. There are many different programs and techniques that all can be used to accomplish these goals. Managed care is a step in the right direction if we want to see improvements with our …show more content…

Many have felt that the intentions of this new enactment were to prevent Americans from receiving the proper care that is needed. However, within managed care organizations is the ability to provide all those Americans with better and more affordable care. The formation of managed care organizations grew rapidly during the Great Depression, “not because consumers were demanding insurance against the risk of medical expenses or because nonphysician entrepreneurs were seeking to establish a business, but rather because providers wanted to maintain and enhance patient revenues” (Kongstvedt, 2). There was a major increase to company wide health care organizations when the government decided to enact the federal Health Maintenance Organization Act. This act “authorized start-up funding and ensured access to the employer based health insurance market” (Kongstvedt, 4). Many advocates of managed care organizations like to point out that, “managed care is unique in that it did not arise out of a specific legislative initiative but instead represents a market response” (Health Care Manager, 54). From this we are better able to understand that the wishes of consumers of traditional health care programs felt that something needed to be improved for success. Now that we know where managed care started, we can venture in to how it has evolved throughout the

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