Who Cares About the Doctor-Patient Relationship? A Review of “ Next In Line: Lowered Care Expectations in the Age of Retail- and Value-Based Health ”

By KIP SULLIVAN, JD A mere two decades ago, the headlines were filled with stories about the “HMO backlash.” HMOs (which in the popular media meant most insurance companies) were the subject of cartoons, the butt of jokes by comedians, and the target of numerous critical stories in the media. They were even the bad guys in some movies and novels. Some defenders of the insurance industry claimed the cause of the backlash was the negative publicity and doctors whispering falsehoods about managed care into the ears of their patients. That was nonsense. The industry had itself to blame. The primary cause of the backlash was the heavy-handed use of utilization review in all its forms –prior, concurrent, and retrospective. There were other irritants, including limitations on choice of doctor and hospital, the occasional killing http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jan/24/news/mn-1260 or injuring https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-wary-of-hmo-suit/ of patients by forcing them to seek treatment from in-network hospitals, and attempts by insurance companies to get doctors not to tell patients about all available treatments. But utilization review was far and away the most visible irritant. The insurance industry understood this and, in the early 2000s, with the encouragement of the health policy establishment, rolled out an ostensibly kinder and gentler version of managed care, a version I and a few others call Managed Care 2.0. What distinguished Managed Care 2.0 from Mana...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Patients Physicians care advocates Next In Line: Lowered Care Expectations in the Age of Retail- and Value-Based Health patient-provider relationship Value-Based Payment Source Type: blogs