Andrew Phillips

In the following viewpoint, Andrew Phillips argues that with the advent of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), middle-class Americans have started to worry about being denied the health care they need. He maintains that while managed care helps control health-care costs, it limits patients’ choices in doctors and applies stricter rules for the types of treatment allowed. According to Phillips, patients’ fears about HMOs have increased as the number of “horror stories”
about poor managed care proliferate. Andrew Phillips is a staff writer for Maclean’s.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. In Phillips’s opinion, managed care takes crucial health care decisions away from doctors and turns them over to whom?
2. Which country has the highest health care costs in the industrialized world...