Health Insurance Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Health restitution - Coursework ExampleHMOs first emerged in the 1940s with Kaiser Permanente in California and the Health Insurance Plan in New York. However, they were not adopted widely until the 1970s, when health care costs increased and the federal government passed the HMO Act of 1973, which unavoidable that companies that leaveed health redress and employed more than 25 employees include an HMO option. The law also supplied start-up subsidies for these health plans (Barsukiewicz, Raffel, & Raffel, 2010).HMOs often operate on a potential or prepaid payment system where providers are paid a capitated feeone flat amount per beneficiaryper month, quarter, or year, regardless of the relative frequency or quantity of services used (Barsukiewicz, Raffel, & Raffel, 2010). In staff model HMOs, such as Kaiser Permanente, providers are salaried, but this arrangement is the exception, not the norm.In-group policies, where health insurance is provided with the employer, the employe r pays the insurance company a set amount agreed upon in advance. According to Austin and Wetle (2012), employers covered 83% of premium costs for exclusive coverage and 73% for family coverage in 2009. The employee, or beneficiary, paid the difference. Then, the health insurance company pays the provider directly.HMOs have the strictest access structure, called a gatekeeper model, where patients essential have a primary care physician (PCP) through who all care is routed. PCPs decide which diagnostic tests are needed and control access to specialists through referrals, deciding when it is necessary for a patient to seek more expensive specialty care (Barsukiewicz, Raffel, & Raffel, 2010).HMOs are usually the least expensive health plans, offer predictable costs for health care, the least administrative paperwork, and cover preventive care (Barsukiewicz, Raffel, & Raffel, 2010). However, HMOs also restrict direct access to specialists by requiring referrals by a PCP, requiring pat ients to see a provider in