title: Health care for the elderly. Who will pay for it and how?
abstract: Given adequate resources and an effective reimbursement system, an individual physician can properly diagnose an elderly patient's illness and can plan and provide a continuum of immediate and long-term care. Why, then, is the larger system failing our older patients? What have diagnosis related groups done for them? Have health maintenance organizations (HMOs) helped at all? Do social HMOs or the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act offer any promise? Does Canada's long-term care system offer physicians more support than ours are given? Each of these questions is explored, and the challenge to US medicine is made clear.
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002170:Canada; D002388:Catastrophic Illness / Q000191:economics; D003191:Comprehensive Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000639:trends; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000191:economics; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000191:economics; D006278:Medicare / Q000639:trends*; D014481:United States