What Can Industry Do for HMOs and HMOs for Industry?

Abstract

Any doubts that may have lingered about the place of health care costs on the national agenda were officially laid to rest by President Carter’s cost-conscious national health insurance principles, outlined in late July 1978 by Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph Califano.¹ Costs now stand out as the most immediate problem of national health policy. Nearly all comprehensive cost control schemes accord the health maintenance organization a significant role, justified on both theoretical and practical grounds. And most proponents of health maintenance organizations are now looking to private industry as a source of leadership and support. This is a relatively new development and could bring dramatic results, should industry accept the challenge. The purpose of this book, the fifth in the Springer Series on Industry and Health Care, is to unravel that challenge to industry and examine its implications, from the perspectives of both industry and the health care system.