anizations seek out people with less destructive ailments, in other words healthy people. They provide the best possible treatment to their patients to get more people enrolled and to maintain current premiums paid by consumers using their HMO’s. Most HMO’s are groups of doctors hired by insurance companies and are controlled or regulated by the hospitals who facilitate them. They also limit what kind of care they receive. Most pressure comes from the government and its ability to influence hospitals to deny treatment. These regulations are expensive and result in revision of private employee health care claims. This type of behavior results in increased spending by the public and more people become uninsured, approximately 50 to 60 million people go without insurance for at least one month each year. Particular HMO’s face many additional problems due to attempted government control through regulations. One such institution is the United Health Group in New York. The United Health Group said, “that it returns decision-making power over patient care to physicians on issues like admitting health plan members to hospitals or providing other treatments.” [4] This kind of decision is made to eliminate frustrating features of most doctors’ work: like getting insurance companies to approve medical decisions that the doctors think they should make. This is a problem because most hospitals are influenced by government officials and make their decisions based on what government wants to do. California based HMO’s are constantly reevaluating their service, so they formed the California Managed Health Care Improvement Task Force. This organization worked on ways of making private, employer-based health care systems work more effectively. The head of (CMHCITF) said, “His experience resulted in a clearer understanding of why HMO’s are so widely disliked.” [10] Many people do not understan...
