Thursday, August 06, 2009

Short Simple Truth about the Dirty Work of HMO

5 comments:

Cargosquid said...

You do remember that the HMO is an invention of the government, right?

Kennedy did that.

Mosquito said...

HMO was created by the insurance industry who then lobbied Congress to create laws so they could create HMO's.

buzz...buzz

Cargosquid said...

And it was the LEFT that did it. HMO's were supposed to lower costs and eliminated private health insurance. If it was due to lobbyists, who was taking the lobbyist money? Kennedy! and the Democrats. And Nixon signed it. He was a liberal. He loved government action. And it was all to "help the little people".

Get government out of the insurance business.

History of HMO from: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2819

From their beginnings, HMOs were designed--by Democrats and Republicans--to eliminate individual health insurance. The result is a vast network of health care collectives (HMOs, PPOs, Point-of-Service plans) created by government that are destined to do harm to individuals.

The individual was first discouraged from buying insurance in 1942 when employee health premiums were made tax deductible to employers--not to individuals. Congress created Medicare in 1965, making individual insurance for those over 65 obsolete. Subsidized, unrestricted health care for seniors lead to an unprecedented frenzy of spending by patients and doctors.

Costs went up, introducing an economic obstacle to individual health insurance. As costs rose, those on the New Left, including then freshman Sen. Ted Kennedy, argued that government ought to pay for everyone's health care and promoted the idea of a health maintenance organization, a term coined by a left-wing college professor.

President Nixon appeased the left and proposed the HMO Act, which Congress passed in 1973. The law created new, supposedly cheaper health coverage with millions of dollars to HMOs, which, until then, constituted a small portion of the market. Kaiser Permanente was the only major HMO in the country by 1969 and most of its members were compelled to join through unions.

Combined with Medicare, the HMO Act eventually eliminated the market for affordable individual health insurance.

The new managed care plans mushroomed with federal subsidies. Employers perceived managed care as less expensive than individual insurance and stopped offering a choice of plans, making insurance more expensive for the individual. The government had effectively instituted HMOs, at the insistence of the left and the capitulation of conservatives and pragmatic businessmen.

Nixon's HMO Act was passed 25 years ago. Since then, the individual has become a prisoner of the tax code. Covered by an employer and herded into managed care, the individual patient is powerless. Under managed care, if the patient gets sick, he or she may wander the maze of managed
bureaucracy, be treated, or, languish in pain awaiting treatment. The patient may also be refused treatment and die.

From: http://www.bestsyndication.com/2005/Nicole-WILSON/081005-HMO-Plan-History.htm

The over use of the system caused rates to go up and in the late 1960’s it was starting to become difficult for a person to afford an individual health plan. In 1973 President Nixon approved the HMO act that the left wing was promoting to help make insurance available to everyone. Only Kaiser Permanente was an HMO in 1969 and most of the members where encouraged to join through their union. The belief of the new HMO act was to encourage lower cost insurance to everyone. At this point of the implementation of Medicare and the HMO act started the beginning of a much larger problem of unaffordable individual health insurance.

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collin said...

The government initiated it to benefit the people with health care and that government has changed so it is left over and the new government taking new steps to promote health care to people.

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