The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the Fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade. Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans.

While much has been written about immigrant traditions, music, food culture, folklore, and other aspects of ethnic identity, little attention has been given to the study of medical culture, until now. In Medical Caregiving and Identity in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region, 1880–2000, Karol Weaver employs an impressive range of primary sources, including folk songs, patent medicine advertisements, oral history interviews, ghost stories, and jokes, to show how the men and women of the anthracite coal region crafted their gender and ethnic identities via the medical decisions they made. Weaver examines communities’ relationships with both biomedically trained physicians and informally trained medical caregivers, and how these relationships reflected a sense of “Americanness.” She uses interviews and oral histories to help tell the story of neighborhood healers, midwives, Pennsylvania German powwowers, medical self-help, and the eventual transition to modern-day medicine. Weaver is able to show not only how each of these methods of healing was shaped by its patrons and their backgrounds but also how it helped mold the identities of the new Americans who sought it out.

Options for physicians working within the prepaid medicine system make sense when you understand the pros and cons, strategies, and structures analyzed in this guide to the new managed care environment. -- Evolution of the managed care movement -- Myths about organizational requirements for managed care success -- Pros and cons of solo practice versus IPA, PHO, or group practice -- Working for a hospital or HMO -- Entrepreneurial, legal, and regulatory characteristics of each model -- Best opportunities for primary care and specialist physicians -- The ideal physician organization for managed care -- Future winners and losers, quality of care, reform, and Wall Street Analyze the cost and benefits of practice and managed care proposals, because an informed choice makes good medicine work.

First Published in 2018. CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

The New Deal placed security at the center of American political and economic life by establishing an explicit partnership between the state, economy, and citizens. In America, unlike anywhere else in the world, most people depend overwhelmingly on private health insurance and employee benefits. The astounding rise of this phenomenon from before World War II, however, has been largely overlooked. In this powerful history of the American reliance on employment-based benefits, Jennifer Klein examines the interwoven politics of social provision and labor relations from the 1910s to the 1960s. Through a narrative that connects the commercial life insurance industry, the politics of Social Security, organized labor's quest for economic security, and the evolution of modern health insurance, she shows how the firm-centered welfare system emerged. Moreover, the imperatives of industrial relations, Klein argues, shaped public and private social security. Looking closely at unions and communities, Klein uncovers the wide range of alternative, community-based health plans that had begun to germinate in the 1930s and 1940s but that eventually succumbed to commercial health insurance and pensions. She also illuminates the contests to define "security"--job security, health security, and old age security--following World War II. For All These Rights traces the fate of the New Deal emphasis on social entitlement as the private sector competed with and emulated Roosevelt's Social Security program. Through the story of struggles over health security and old age security, social rights and the welfare state, it traces the fate of New Deal liberalism--as a set of ideas about the state, security, and labor rights--in the 1950s, the 1960s, and beyond.

Designed for physicians who are interested in exploring the formation of physician-directed managed care networks, this indispensable resource provides answers to questions about size, scope, incorporation, marketing, staffing, and more. This easy-to-read, comprehensive text includes charts, graphs, and a resource list of capital funding programs.

Of Catholic principles for health-care justice -- Managed care : definition, history, and moral successes -- Managed care : problems and potential solutions -- Ethics of mergers, joint ventures, and other reconfigurations -- Public policy and contemporary health care -- Some particular problems in health-care justice -- Toward some overall conclusions about health-care justice today.

To limit the skyrocketing costs of their employees' health insurance, companies such as Dow, Chevron, and IBM, as well as many large HMOs, have increasingly hired physicians to supervise the medical care they provide. As Elaine Draper argues in The Company Doctor, company doctors are bound by two conflicting ideals: serving the medical needs of their patients while protecting the company's bottom line. Draper analyzes the advent of the corporate physician both as an independent phenomenon, and as an index of contemporary culture, reaching startling conclusions about the intersection of corporate culture with professional autonomy. Drawing on over 100 interviews with company physicians, scientists, and government and labor officials, as well as historical, legal, and statistical sources and medical trade association data, Draper presents an illuminating overview of the social context and meaning of professional work in corporations. Draper finds that while medical journals, speeches, and ethical codes proclaim the independent professional judgment of corporate physicians, the company doctors she interviewed often expressed anguish over the tightrope they must walk between their patients' health and the corporate oversight they face at every turn. Draper dissects the complex position occupied by company doctors to explore broad themes of doctor-patient trust, employee loyalty, privacy issues, and the future direction of medicine. She addresses such controversial topics as drug screening and the difficult position of company doctors when employees sue companies for health hazards in the workplace. Company doctors are but one example of professionals who have at times ceded their autonomy to corporate management. Physicians provide the prototypical professional case for exploring this phenomenon, due to their traditional independence, extensive training, and high levels of prestige. But Draper expands the scope of the book—tracing parallel developments in the law, science, and technology—to draw insightful conclusions about changing conditions in the professional workplace, as corporate cultures everywhere adapt to the new realities of the global economy. The Company Doctor provides a compelling examination of the corporatization of American medicine with far-reaching implications for professionals in many other fields.

Outsmarting Managed Care is a practical handbook for helping patients work within the limitations of today's managed-care-driven medical system. Basing his guide on twenty-five years of practice and a senior position at a leading HMO, Dr. Barron advises readers how to schedule elective surgery (timing is everything; you must know when new rounds of residents are starting); interview specialists (you can use their limited experience to jump "out of network" and still get reimbursed), negotiate better fees using your own medical records, navigate the referrals system, and much more.

The book is written in two parts.The first part is for physicians wanting to learn about joining or starting their own medical practice. Part I teaches doctors the following: How to make money in private practice, how to bill insurance companies, required medical licenses, required healthcare laws, what to watch out for before signing an employment contract, insurance company contract, understanding payroll, Human Resources, billing and getting paid, technology in the medical office, computers, electronic health records, practice management software, HIPAA, HITECH Act, Red Flags Rule, hiring and firing, designing an office, marketing, Public Relations and more.The second part is for physician entrepreneurs. Physician entrepreneurs are doctors that are interested in starting their own business or commercializing their research. This book covers the following topics: creating a business from an idea, trademarks, copyrights, raising capital, creating a board of directors, creating an advisory board, understanding term sheets, intellectual property, customer acquisition, marketing, public relations, hiring a management team, how to negotiate, and working with venture capitalists and angels.