A few years ago, fistfights would break out in the parking lots of state offices in Miami as HMO salesmen rushed to sign up welfare mothers arriving to pick up food stamps. Some marketers parceled out gifts of diapers or cheap medicines to make a
WHEATON, Md.—On a muggy August morning at Hot Shoppes cafeteria, salesman Matt Buckley tells a group of retirees over coffee that Medicare is changing and they must adapt. The seniors seem worried by the prospect. Yet they know Medicare, the U.S. government’s $211-billion-a-year, health-care system
In the hillside shantytowns of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, people get drinking water from trucks and store it in barrels salvaged from the dump or nearby factories. They have no choice. The city’s crumbling, 50-year-old water distribution system doesn’t extend to where they live. Even most
Florida health czar Doug Cook said he was “sick for a week” after he learned two of his HMO regulators had accepted more than $90,000 in consulting fees from two Medicaid health plans. “Common sense would indicate this is extremely improper,” said Cook, director of
Just a few short months ago, a New York medical insurance plan called AssureCare, Inc. hoped to reap hearty profits caring for thousands of society’s poorest people. Bankrolled by a Florida entrepreneur with a $480 million personal fortune, the HMO seemed likely to snatch up
