It also prevents most lawsuits against HMOs from making it to trial. The few that do make it to court are only allowed to sue for legal fees and medical costs, not for damages. Since HMOs cannot be sued, they have no fear of being negligent. .
Defining the purpose of health care should be an easy task, but it is not always as clear-cut and simple as it appears. According to the President's Advisory Commission the purpose of health care ".must be to continually reduce the impact and the burden of illness, injury, and disability, and to improve the health and functioning of the people of the United States." Using this definition as a basis, HMOs have clearly lost focus of this purpose. Evidence of this includes some important "avoidable errors." For example, there is the fact that many Americans are injured while undergoing their treatment. In the ten-year period between 1983 and 1993 a national study was conducted that found that in the final year alone approximately 7,400 patients died as a result of medicinal errors. Also found was the fact that the number of deaths doubled over the course of the study. Another problem is that many patients do not receive adequate care. This is known as "underutilization of services." "An estimated 18,000 people die each year from heart attacks because they did not receive effective interventions." Overuse of services is also a major problem of managed health care providers. In many instances patients of an HMO are given unnecessary care. Not only does this increase the patients costs, but it also presents a threat to their health. An analysis of seven health plans that .
Bodart 3.
offer hysterectomies revealed that approximately one of every six of such operations performed was done so unnecessarily (President's Advisory Commission, 229-230). .
An additional major issue surrounding HMOs is cost. Jeoffery Cowley states, "cost is what really bothers Americans when it comes to health care" (Cowley, 61).
