Insurance companies hate indemnity plans. Good HMO candidates: people who are young and in good medicarecarrier health (especially those planning to marry and/or start a family); families with children; older people (who tend to see doctors frequently, who don''t want to physically travel to different medicarecarrier specialists and who like one-stop shopping); and those on a tight budget are all bad HMO candidates: People medicarecarrier who can''t or who are unwilling to give up medical relationships medicarecarrier with doctors outside their HMO. Preferred provider organizations were established as a compromise between indemnity plans medicarecarrier and HMOs. PPOs provide managed medicarecarrier care but also meet consumer demand for control over whom you see and where you get your services.

The current debate for reform seems to be more in favor of a competitive market of managed care ("managed medicarecarrier competition") over the option of a single payer or medicarecarrier national health insurance plan. Managed Care is a health care network in which costs are controlled through utilization management. medicarecarrier This means that a primary care provider serves as the "coordinator" for access to specialty care. In managed care systems, the patients are unable to directly seek the (more expensive) care of a specialist for those conditions which may be addressed effectively, and much less expensively, by the primary care provider. An example of this would be going to an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist for a common ear medicarecarrier infection.

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