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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| What can be learned about the ethical soundness of Medicare HMOs from studies comparing them to fee-for service Medicare | | Author(s) | Mark R Wicclair |
| Journal title | Journal of Ethics, Law, and Aging, vol 5, no 1, Spring/Summer 1999 |
| Pages | pp 29-50 |
| Keywords | Health services ; Costs [care] ; Social ethics ; Literature reviews ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Sixteen studies comparing the performance of US health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and fee-for-service (FFS) systems in relation to Medicare beneficiaries are analysed. Some report that HMOs perform better, or no worse than traditional FFS Medicare in certain respects (positive findings). Others, and even many of the same studies, report that HMOs perform worse than traditional FFS Medicare in some respects (negative findings). It is argued that these comparative studies are inconclusive. On the one hand, they fail to establish the ethical soundness of Medicare HMOs. On the other hand, they also fail to demonstrate that HMOs are an ethically unacceptable means of providing health care to older people. The inconclusiveness of the studies is attributable to inconclusive empirical data and a lack of decisive standards for evaluating the performance of HMOs. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990427210 A |
| Classmark | L: QDC: TQ: 64A: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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