Insurance

In most of New York State, it doesn’t matter what “metal level” you choose: you can’t get an individual or family health insurance plan on the state’s exchange that provides coverage for out-of-network physician care. How did the exchange come to be designed without a requirement of such coverage? That’s what the insurers chose. And some advocates for better health care are concerned.

A second look at the phenomenon by which health care policy has come to be dominated by a single-minded desire for cost control, while concerns about maximizing the quality of care have been downgraded or ignored entirely.

Limited debate keeps public from knowing the full scope of the potential health benefits it is being asked to give up.

Limited debate keeps public from knowing the full scope of the potential health benefits it is being asked to give up.

Market-based prescriptions hawked; focus on quality supplanted by focus on cost.

The rise of “competitive,” for-profit health insurance from the ’70s to the ’90s. Concerns about quality of care lose out. First in a series.