Managed health care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Managed health care - Essay Example with American Medical Association (AMA) becoming a national force bringing awareness in 1900s (PBS), the call for advancement in medicinal procedures and the want to lure and maintain a healthy work force of organizations. This resulted in inelastic expenditure on health with establishment of Federal responsibility to ensure health security and devising of health insurance policies. There arose a shortage of health-manpower as demand for health facilities increased. More money was now officially (from 4.5% in the beginning to 15% currently, of the total budget) put into the making of the specialized doctors who demanded greater fee, breakthrough sophistication in medicine were taking place, and hospital expenses and profits were expanding till the point it became an integrated, privatized and corporatized system. Other important factors that contributed to the rising health costs included exploitation of fee-for-service method, general inflation in economy, greater demand of services as a result of greater and aging population (AWHP) and speculation over changing government policies. Managed-health-care, which took over as a result of exploitation of pay-as-needed method of health care programs, mostly sapped these factors of rising costs. Firstly, the appointment of third party kept the interest of both consumer and financier of the health benefit in view. It put the urgency and necessity of the service consumed under unbiased third party scrutiny, enabled cost effective group contracting with health-service providers and minimized the chances of exploitation with maximum consumer satisfaction. At the same time the service provider (hospital etc) were also brought to account for their charges which in turn reviewed the money minting privatization and brought the overall cost of health care in check. Consumer-driven heath care as the name suggests empowers the consumer to the health care program. It enables more space in decision making for the consumer, with