|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
 |
Health Care Cost Containment: Is Managed Care Just the Latest Impossible Dream?
Dear Interested Party: As the nation once again faces double digit increases in health care costs, the seemingly unanswerable question of how to control the problem has suddenly returned to the nation’s radar screen. A new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation published today in the online issue of the journal Health Affairs traces the effectiveness of government and private sector attempts to reign in health care costs over the past three decades. The article, "The Sad History of Health Care Cost Containment as Told in One Chart" provides a reminder that although many are quick to blame the failure of managed care for rapidly rising costs, no approach to cost containment that has been tried in the past 35 years has had a lasting impact. The article is available online at http://www.healthaffairs.org/WebExclusives/Altman_Web_Excl_012302.htm “From wage and price controls in the 70s, to voluntary efforts in the 80s, to managed care and the threat of health reform in the 90s, no approach to controlling health care costs has had staying power – costs have always bounced back,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation president and the article’s lead author. The article, also co-authored by Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Larry Levitt, charts the ups and downs of health care costs since the early 1960s. According to Altman and Levitt, “Some might argue that we were not serious or comprehensive enough about any one of these approaches for them to have had a lasting impact. On the other hand, it could be argued that the point is academic; we were as serious as public and political support for any one approach would allow.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is a non-profit independent national health care philanthropy dedicated to providing information and analysis on health issues to policymakers, the media and the general public. The Foundation is not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
