assignment Details

Healthcare financing in the United States is complex and involves numerous stakeholders. As U.S. healthcare costs started to rise in the 1970s, the health maintenance organization (HMOs) in the United States evolved with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. Thereafter, other managed care plans proliferated. The goal of managed care plans is to reduce healthcare costs by preventing unnecessary healthcare procedures. However, criticisms on the managed care plans include high cost of insurance, limiting patient access to procedures, excessive administrative control, denying patients necessary procedures, and preventing patients from seeing specialists without pre-approval. Managed care plans are today major stakeholders in the financing of healthcare. Prepare an analysis with at least 5 pages that accomplishes the following.

• Provide a brief introduction to managed care plans.
• Select 2 managed care plans that you are familiar with through reading or experience.
• Present 4 advantages for each managed care plan.
• Present 4 disadvantages for each managed care plan.
• Provide a summarized analysis of the performance of managed care plans in the United States.

Submit your assignment in APA format, as follows:

• Title page: The title should be in all capitals.
• Length: There should be at least 5 pages.
• Body: This begins on the page following the title page and must be double-spaced (be careful not to triple- or quadruple-space between paragraphs). The typeface should be 12-point Times New Roman or 12-point Courier in regular black type. Do not use color, bold type, or italics, except as required for APA-level headings and references. The deliverable length of the body of your paper for this assignment is 5 pages. In-body academic citations to support your decisions and analysis are required. The use of a variety of academic sources is encouraged.
• Reference page: References that align with your in-body academic sources must be listed on the final page of your paper. The references must be in APA format and use appropriate spacing, hanging indents, italics, and uppercase and lowercase usage as appropriate for the type of resource that is used. Remember that the Reference page is not a bibliography but a further listing of the abbreviated in-body citations that you used in your paper. Every referenced item must have a corresponding in-body citation.