title: Razing a Tower of Babel: a taxonomy for managed care and health insurance plans.
abstract: To many, the U.S. health care system has become an unintelligible alphabet soup of three-letter health plans. There is little agreement about which characteristics distinguish one type of plan from another. In this article we chip away at what has become a Tower of Babel of managed care and health insurance terminology. We review past and current trends in the market for nontraditional health benefit plans and propose a taxonomy, or system of classification, that will aid in understanding how managed care plans differ from conventional health insurance and from one another. Also included is a comprehensive glossary of terms.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University.
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Weiner
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: de Lissovoy
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003284:Contract Services; D017047:Cost Sharing; D004014:Dictionaries as Topic; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000145:classification* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000145:classification* / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000639:trends; D008389:Marketing of Health Services / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014481:United States