Final answer:
The rise and fall of managed health care plans were influenced by the aging U.S. population, market consolidations for efficiency, alternative models like HMOs, adverse selection in insurance, and political battles over healthcare reforms such as the Health Security Act and the Affordable Care Act.
Step-by-step explanation:
The rise and fall of various types of managed health care plans can be primarily attributed to changes in demand, policy, and market dynamics within the U.S. healthcare sector. Initially, the aging population and the trend towards mass production in healthcare led to a merger mania in the 1990s, where independent hospitals and clinics were consolidated into larger systems to increase efficiency and adopt standardization measures like telemedicine and artificial intelligence. This period also saw the growth of urgent care facilities.
Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) emerged as an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service model, offering a way to control costs by providing medical care providers with a set reimbursement per patient. However, issues such as adverse selection challenged the insurance market by creating an imbalance where those most in need of insurance (high-risk parties) were more likely to obtain it, skewing risk pools and making it difficult to maintain sustainable pricing structures. Multiple healthcare reforms have been proposed and implemented over the years, each with its own set of proponents and detractors, highlighting the political and economic complexities involved in managing health care.
The Health Security Act proposed in the early 1990s, popularly known as 'Hillarycare', faced heavy opposition, partly due to fears of socialized medicine and concerns about reduced quality stemming from government regulation of healthcare prices. The Obama administration also took on healthcare reform as a major policy initiative, culminating in the Affordable Care Act, which received varied responses from different stakeholders in the healthcare industry.