Government
For-profit Medicare plans don't skimp more on expensive procedures
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Jan. 26, 2004
A study investigating whether for-profit Medicare managed care plans deny high-cost procedures more often than nonprofit plans found the opposite. In the Jan. 8 New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health said patients enrolled in for-profit plans were much more likely to receive two of 12 expensive procedures examined and were just as likely as those in nonprofit plans to get the remaining 10.
"We found no evidence that enrollees in for-profit health plans were less likely to receive such procedures," the study's authors said. This was true for both "low-discretion" procedures and for "high-discretion" procedures, such as hysterectomies.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/01/26/gvbf0126.htm.