Managed Consumerism In Health Care

Managed Consumerism In Health Care : "This is the moment for a second generation of consumer-driven health policies and products. The shortcomings of HMOs, capitation, IDSs, and the other components of managed competition have opened the way for alternative approaches to using market mechanisms for improving the health care system. Consumerism appeals to the widespread and legitimate desire for a more transparent, flexible, and personal system and provides a salutary counterbalance to the organizational hypertrophy and opaque administrative mechanisms of the managed care era. However, consumer-driven health care suffers from its own shortcomings. Blunt cost-sharing provisions, unadjusted for the patient’s income or health status, will penalize the poor and the sick while allowing their wealthier and healthier compatriots to retain higher balances in their HSAs. Nonselective network designs, the dismantling of utilization management, and a reversion to fee-for-service payment will encourage spending for high-cost services that fall above the insurance deductible. The emphasis on measurement, payment, and choice at the level of the individual practitioner rather than the provider organization will disvalue the information technology, managerial, and cultural infrastructure necessary to integrate care across comorbid conditions and codependent services."
We are now seeing the evolution of Web 2.0 - which consists of clever tools which allow individuals to interact with each other as members of a community. Health 2.0 could be a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery, which allows patients to pick and choose - and get - what they want !