Article from the Los Angeles Times online
HMOs,
once the top choice for Americans who get healthcare as a job perk, are so last
century. Tightly controlled health maintenance organizations have steadily lost
ground over the last decade to preferred provider organizations, which offer
greater choice of physicians and hospitals and direct access to specialists —
though at a higher price. HMOs garnered only 25% of the employer-based health
benefits market last year, down from a high of 31% in 1996, according to a
recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based think
tank. During the same period, PPOs nearly doubled their market share to
55%...One of the most talked-about new plans is Tonik, launched a few months ago
by the California Blue Cross subsidiary of WellPoint Inc., the nation's largest
health insurer. Directed toward people in their 20s, Tonik seeks a coveted group
insurers call the "young invincibles" because they are rarely sick...The most
controversial feature of Tonik is its exclusion of any maternity coverage.