Managing Managed Care's Tarnished Image

I have criticized managed care in these pages several times before, 1 – 7 and I am about to do so again. This time I am concerned not about access to care, incentives to undertreat, or the loss of physicians' integrity, but about the policies and pronouncements of the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP), the principal organization that represents managed care. I believe that its recently announced initiative called “Putting Patients First” amounts to little more than a thinly veiled attempt to ward off state and federal legislative actions to curb the abuses of managed care. The AAHP has approximately 1000 . . .