Managing the managed care market competition

Market competition among rival managed care plans has been rapidly changing the health care delivery of individual provider organizations, Local health care markets, and the American health care system. Yet, there are critical unanswered questions about managed care, and there are economic and structural problems inherent in health care markets. Thus, managed care market competition alone might not be sufficient to solve some important problems and meet the important goals of our health care system and society. Market competition, combined with some regulation to managed the competition, is more likely to achieve those goals. Market competition among managed care plans is described, and problems of this type of competition are explained in this article. One approach to managing the managed care market competition, which blends market competition with government regulation, is also presented.