Providing and funding for good quality health care has always been a major concern for the industry and especially individuals. Years ago, most of the cost of health care was either out of pockets or made a trade with food or other material items for medical care. In today’s economy health care is very expensive (even more expensive then back in history), even if there are health and medical insurance.
Back in the mid 1930’s, the Blue Cross/Blue shield organization sought to give individuals hospital and medical coverage with only one prepaid fee (a deductible). Years later, there were other health and medical insurance companies who started offering coverage, such as, Kaiser Permanente and others. With both companies they offer each individual/families the same medical plan with a prepaid fee for coverage for the medical care they received (National Healthcare Reform Magazine, 2012).
Over the years from the 1980’s and the 1990’s, even more organization started up, changing the microeconomic and macroeconomics of healthcare. The first one is Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO). HMO’s offers individuals a low monthly fee for coverage, which includes a little to no co-pay for service and medical visits. The way HMO works, the company pays whatever they decide they want to pay, and the patient has to pay the remaining balance of what’s left. Those carriers had the power to put restrictions on the more expensive services. These carriers could decide that a service was a risk and decide not to pay for the service for the covered individual. The HMO carrier offered low cost health care and offered plans to the individual with a cost savings (National Healthcare Reform Magazine, 2012).
With HMO plans that only cover low risk level treatment, some individuals started to turn to another plan, Point of Service (POS). This plan was a mix of the HMO and the Preferred