The Transition from Managed Care to Consumerism: A Community-Level Status Report

September/October 2008
Health Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 5
Jon B. Christianson, Paul B. Ginsburg, Debra A. Draper

This paper assesses the evolving “facilitated consumerism” model of health care at the community level using data from the Community Tracking Study (CTS). We find that in a relatively short time, large employers and health plans have made notable progress in putting the building blocks in place to support their vision of consumerism. However, developments in the CTS communities suggest that the consumerism strategy evolving in local markets is more nuanced than implied by some descriptions of health care consumerism.

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