This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Voluntary Health Insurance and Contemporary Medical Practice

Albert L. Siu, MD, MSPH

Arch Intern Med. 1993;153(4):457-463.

Abstract
American medicine is financed today by a patchwork of systems formed around a concept of competitive voluntary health insurance that evolved over the past 50 years. This article reviews the theory of health insurance from a clinical perspective to examine whether changes in medical science and practice have made such an insurance system obsolete. As it is currently applied, a system of competitive voluntary health insurance conflicts with the goals of modern medical practice due to advances in screening and in treatment and the need to deal more effectively with paying for care of unknown efficacy. Proposals to reform health insurance must deal with the medical failings of competitive voluntary health insurance and should do more than simply extend the current system to cover more Americans.

(Arch Intern Med. 1993;153:457-463)

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Medicine, University of California-Los Angeles, and the RAND Health Program, Santa Monica, Calif.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Denial of Health Insurance due to Preexisting Conditions: How Well does One High-Risk Pool Work?
Sumner et al.
Med Care Res Rev 1997;54:357-371.
ABSTRACT