Public policy was important in promulgating this managed care model, for example, through the
HMO Act of 1973. The book reviews the history of Kaiser Permanente, a private not-for-profit company, and Aetna, a publicly traded, for-profit company, as two case studies in the health insurance industry.
Congress passed the
HMO Act of 1973 to promote health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that could negotiate with doctors and hospitals to set lower prices.
In an op-ed at TheAdvertiser.com, Congressman Ron Paul added that "Congress needs to let markets work by aggressively repealing health-care laws, including: the
HMO Act of 1973; the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit passed in 2003; and the Obamacare bill passed in 2010."
* The Federal
HMO Act of 1973 sought to foster the creation of health maintenance organizations.
(116.) By June 1976, only seventeen HMOs had been federally qualified, twelve of which had been assisted by federal loans through the
HMO Act of 1973. Comptroller General's Report to Congress, supra note 103, at 6.
Although Congress may not have given the then-President everything he asked for, one result of the Nixon Administration's push towards health care reform was passage of the
HMO Act of 1973. Before the HMO Act, however, the first Federal legislation in which the term HMO was defined was the Medicare provisions of the 1972 amendments to the Social Security Act.
Paul Ellwood, the man who invented the phrase "health maintenance organization" and who convinced Richard Nixon to support the
HMO Act of 1973, the law that subsidized the formation of the U.S.
Nearly 27 years ago, the
HMO Act of 1973 was passed.
The federal
HMO Act of 1973, for example, provided grants only to nonprofit HMOs.
The
HMO Act of 1973 set standards for care provided by HMO's and provided incentives for HMO development.
But beside them are the vast network of federally mandated and regulated HMOs (which were empowered by the
HMO Act of 1973, as part of the Nixon administration's love affair with wage and price controls), the Indian Health Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs (which provides health services to veterans), the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and dozens of government institutes like the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Heart Institute.
29, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the
HMO Act of 1973 into law.
