Seniors should not be coerced into an HMO in order to get drug coverage, ... Is the White House Backing Away from a Comprehensive Medicare Drug Benefit
Quotes about hmo (15 Quotes)
That (HMO) group has been in a lot of pressure over the last year, as they've had disappointing earnings, ... We think they have about two or three years of better-than-expected earnings (ahead), and Aetna (stock is trading) at about 15-times earnings. So it's a cheap stock, a large-cap company due for better times.
We're now in a situation where a lot of the big corporate purchasing groups are playing one HMO off against another, ... As a result, the average price increase for the HMO industry was actually down slightly for 1996.
Under current law, most Americans can sue their HMO or insurance company if it denies care and a patient dies or is injured as a result. Again, most employees of small businesses already can sue their HMO. Only those employees who work in companies with self-insured plans are not able to sue, as these plans operate under the federal Employee Retirement, Insurance, Security Act.
When Wall Street analysts talk about efficiencies, they're talking about more money for HMO profits, not better care.
I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either.
We're pretty bullish on the sector. I mean, what's happened at a macro level is that consumers have said that straight traditional HMO products are not their products of choice. They really want a product that gives them more options in terms of doctors and places to go for their health care. The traditional HMOs then have to evolve. This leads to some rising costs in turn, the companies raise premiums to keep up with that. Most of the companies have made this transition and are experiencing extremely strong earnings this year.
We should point out that significant legal hurdles face the plaintiffs before they could prevail in these cases. Many of the agreements between the managed care companies and the physicians require arbitration and this could defuse the class actions ... However, we believe current HMO valuations assume these lawsuits will be dismissed out of hand. This is unlikely.
You might ask the doctors whether they're happy with the HMO, and whether or not they have to go through a lot of hoops to get you care, ... Because if the HMO is controlling services very tightly, then maybe that's not the plan for you.
Education needs to be a national priority, particularly getting class sizes down and hiring more teachers and helping with school construction, ... He's been emphasizing the importance of a patient's bill of rights for those people who get their health care from an HMO (health maintenance organization) and a prescription medication benefit. These are not ideas that just were sprung on in the last few days.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has determined that our bill will cost about an average of 1.19 a month, ... So, for less than the cost of a Big Mac, you're guaranteed that the medical decisions that affect your life and the lives of your family are made by you and your doctor, not by HMO accountants.
Recent mergers have given the industry a strangle hold over the health insurance market. With fewer pressures for efficiency and no government oversight of rates, insurers have been given free rein to spend more of our health care dollars on overhead, profit, and administration. The last decade of HMO mergers has taught us that when fewer HMOs dominate the health care market, quality goes down, premiums go up, and patients get short changed. Already, 45 million Americans are uninsured because they cannot afford to pay the insurers' ransom.
People think that their vote counts. They go to college, and everything gets mixed up. People stop caring, ... They raise the gas prices, but what the Everyman makes and welfare never seem to keep up. The HMO system is so ridiculous. I'm slightly educated. No one wants to hear what Hilary Duff thinks of the economy.
This is especially egregious because at the very time when these HMO executives are getting these huge paydays - whether or not the merger does well for shareholders or consumers - 6 million Californians have no health insurance and millions of working families are just struggling to pay their health care premiums,
If you ask, 'Is my insurer or HMO likely to pay for the alternative service that I use for the condition for which I use it' The answer is likely to be 'no,'