Managed care plans do little to rein in costs, Dallas doctor's study says

New research by a UT Southwestern Medical Center physician calls into question whether health insurers are adequately containing costs. Ethan Halm, MD, chief of internal medicine at UT Southwestern, found that private managed-care plans for Medicare do no better job of steering patients away from unnecessary surgeries than the traditional fee-for-service system, where the patient goes to any provider and the doctor or hospital bills Medicare directly.