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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (8078)	4/18/2006 1:01:10 AM
From: Lhn5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

<<Do you see the high cost of health care as the bigger problem or the fact that corporations are pressured/required to provide health insurance? Quel est la difference?>> If the cost of health care wasn't so high, it would be less of a burden for corporations to provide it. On the other hand, based on the 'competing companies' explanation below, perhaps the main forces compelling corporations to provide health care benefits are companies competing against one another for employees. However, we know it is not quite so simple...except in pure capitalism? <<The multitude layers of paper-pushing middlemen is a completely useless and wasteful cause of high costs. This is another popularly contrived myth that has no reality whatsoever. Any "middle man" who wasn't absolutely essential would be immediately eliminated by competing companies at the ends. Often companies eliminate the middle as a cost cutting measure only to find how essential they were.>> Try this scenario. A major national health insurance company hires a local medical group to care for its HMO patients in a given community. The local group hires its own primary care physicians but contracts out the specialty care to local independent contractors. The independent contractors are paid a contracted fee for service rate for services rendered, but need authorization for each service. This is a pretty common scenario. However, as it turns out, of all the services requested by the independent contractors, 99.5% are approved. So what has been accomplished? Here are two examples. 1) A committee exists to rubber stamp appropriate care. A complete waste of resources and funds. 2) Care is delayed. Patients lose more time from work. Diseases progress and the ultimate care needed is more costly than if provided in a more timely manner.