Wall Street and Managed Care

WALL STREET AND MANAGED CARE: Managed Care is going through a transformation in which power and control is being shifted away from professionals and communities into both new and old organizations financed by Wall Street. The benefits are being used not for patients and buyers but for managed care firms and insurers who seek control over patients and use that control to pressure providers and hospitals to lower resource use and lower prices. The savings engendered through managed care are used to provide profits for Wall Street investors. In a system that stresses costs, there is great risk that quality will eventually suffer. It is unlikely that patients and buyers will see improved access or meaningfully lower costs for medical care unless there is greater profit to the investors for such effort. Public health and charitable goals of earlier generations will fade as medicine becomes driven by Wall Street dictated financial ratios that determine where the capital for growth and development goes. These and other issues related to the encroachment of Wall Street into medicine through managed care can be explored by accessing and browsing the sites and documents in this folder.

Documents

Financial Incentives and Managed Care

Aggressive competition in the managed care market place may be saving money but may be creating an inequitable and inefficient health delivery system because of the incentives insurers and providers have in the current unstructured marketplace, according to John Kuder, professor of health economics and finance at Cornell University. This document, primarily concerning medical decisison making, is also relavent to the future of managed care as viewed as a current and potential Wall Street investiment industry.

Managed Care Networks Buying Practices

Wall Street Journal article on managed care entities buying up medical practices. (Registration - free- to WSJ site necessary to acces this document). The pluses and minuses to doctors selling their practices is discussed as well as the nature of the business of running practice networks by the managed care corporations buying the practices. A number of specific companies are discussed with their own websites directly accessible from this document.

PULSE: HMO Stock Values

This document is a publication of Sherlock Company, which provides financial advice to managed care companies and financial institutions interested in managed care. Although Sherlock offers an expensive subscription to extensive managed are corporate information, individual documents such as this can be reached without charge. This issue covers the capital costs of HMO's and stock market valuation . It also gives news flashes on various manged care companies ("Industry Notes"). Several other documents of Sherlock's can also be reached form this document.

Table of Authorities on Managed Care in the Marketplace

This is a document prepared by "Physicians Who Care," an organization of physicians dedicated to the rights of physicians and patients. Congressman Greg Ganske presents extensive information and opinion regarding Medicare and managed care at other locations within this site. This table provides a list of references related to managed care with a significant number of articles relavent to the marketplace and managed care and other issues relavent to the potential profitability of managed care entities. A worthwhile bibliography for those interested in these issues.

The Future of Managed Care: An Analyst's Perspective

This document is located at Sherlock Comapany's website. Sherlock provides financial advice to managed care companies as well as to other companies with a financial interest in magaged care. This document provides an extensive outline of all the factors related to investing in the stock of managed care corporations. This is a ***** document to gain an understanding of Wall Street's view of investing in managed care.

Sites

AMA Home Page

This site gives access to all of the AMA's publications. In particular, The American Medical News includes information which is relavent to Wall Street's perpective of managed care. ***Although this site is primarily designed for physicians and most of the publications accessible are medical journals, anyone can register for free. It is easy to use and well-organized. By using its "News" publication it gives a wide audience access to medical news helpful to virtually anyone interested in medical issues, including the financial aspects of managed care.

FINWeb Home Page

This web site is the definitive server for financial economics sites. It is run by Professor James Garven at the University of Texas. Numerous sites listed have information pertaining to the financial aspects of health care and managed health care. It contains access to journals and specific papers as well as databases and other financial servers. ****This is the definitive site for locating financial economic information. However, this is also its weakness in that locating information can be either overwhelming or tedious.

Hoover's Online

"The ultimate source for company information." This easy to use site gives access to detailed information on any managed care company (or any other type of company for that matter!). To find out obout HMO's, for example, go to "Corporate Directory" and click on "Industry." Then choose "Health Maintenance Organizations." 32 U. S. HMO's are listed with direct access to detailed information put together by Hoover on each company as well as direct connection to each company's web site. *****The best place to find detailed information on specific managed care companies.

The Wall Street Journal

When it comes to finding information about Wall Street this is the place. Hardly a week goes by without an article or two related to managed care enterprises. An advantage of this site is that it has an internal search engine to find articles from the previous 30 days' issues of the Wall Street Journal. *****Outstanding source of business news. Well-organized and easy to use. Requires (currently free) registration.

WWW Bunsiness WorldNews Today

This site affords daily updated information on Wall Street. Any news relavent to managed health care will be reported in detail. Late breaking financial news can be obtained by clicking "Press Releases." **An extremely easy to use site. It's main drawback is the inability to access news stories from previous issues.