Annals of emergency medicine
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No specialty better personifies the changes occurring throughout the health care delivery system than emergency medicine. It was just a short 25 years ago that the specialty of emergency medicine, as it is known today, emerged. ⋯ To develop a vision for the future of the specialty, it is important to first evaluate the current trends in health care and their influences on the specialty. Three significant areas stand out in the current health care landscape: consolidation of hospital systems, emergence of publicly traded physician practice management companies, and the increasing penetration of managed care.
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What will the future bring? Will biomedical advances move rapidly and affordably into clinical practice, stimulated by the demands of the educated consumer? Or will changes in the way health care is financed and physician inability to stay abreast of clinical changes widen the gap between high-quality and mediocre medical care? Is there a limit to what we can afford to provide, regardless of availability?
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Historical Article
Health care reform is dead--long live health care reform.
The 1993 Clinton health care reform effort was not the end of reform but the inauspicious start of a fiercely contested round of reform that may take another decade or two to complete. The 1993 Clinton plan was just the latest stage of a battle for national action on health care than began with Teddy Roosevelt's promise of compulsory health insurance in the 1912 presidential campaign.