San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary

San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary

This lack of freedom of choice can cause problems. While most HMOs have a wide selection of primary care physicians, they usually have far fewer subspecialists (such as cardiologist, gastroenterologists, rheumatologists, etc.) who are authorized to handle specialty care. And if you should need a subspecialist, your doctor may be reluctant to refer you since pressure is brought to bear on HMO physicians to keep costs down. Moreover, when a referral is made, it may not be the best subspecialist your doctor knows since he or she can only refer you to doctors who work with the HMO. Your choice of hospitals is also limited to those owned or authorized by the San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary plan.

Types of HMOs

There are three different types of HMOs, each of which outs a slightly different twist on the way health benefits are delivered to plan San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary members.

The group model. Although the first group model was established in 1929 at a cooperatively owned hospital in Elk City, Oklahoma, by Michael Shadid, the most famous group model HMO is probably Kaiser Permanente, located in California and several other states. Group models are essentially partnerships among the medical plan, usually a large number of doctors who work within the HMO (called the group) and sometimes hospitals (as with Kaiser). The plan will only refer you to doctors in the group. In return, doctors will not work for anyone who is not a member of the plan. The doctors work in clinics and hospitals that are either partners in the HMO or contract with it to provide San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary. At the Puget Sound Health Cooperative in Seattle, decisions about patient care are made with the patient, the plan, and the doctors, with a lot of peer oversight to make sure costs are kept down and the quality of care is kept high.

The staff model. In staff type HMOs, the doctors are not equal partners with the plan but, rather, are employees of the plan. This means the plan has a lot of power (the power of an employer) over how patients are treated, since the doctors are hired as individuals and do not have the clout of a group behind them. Most treatment is don’t at plan-owned hospitals and clinics, and only plan doctors can treat plan members. Doctors in staff type HMOs, like group San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary, can only work for the HMO and do not have an individual practices.

The IPA Model. IPA stands for independent physician association. An IPA is a group of doctors who, for the limited purpose of working with an HMO, form a legal entity that contracts with the health plan. In other words, doctors who are in private practice, and who cooperate with traditional health insurance companies, can at the same time be members of an IPA model HMO. However, unlike the referrals that might be made in a traditional health insurance situation, if the case comes to the doctor from the HMO, he or she can only use plan-authorized San Antonio cheap health insurance temporary physicians for referrals and can only hospitalize patients in plan contract hospitals.

…Continued in San Antonio company group health insurance small