All-Products Clauses
Insurance companies use their popular plans to force employers to offer their unpopular ones. They do the same to doctors.
A doctor who would never otherwise accept the terms of the Green Shield HMO may be forced to unless he wants to lose all his Green Shield PPO patients, too.
Insurers claim this is for your benefit, so you can change from one plan to another and keep the same doctors. In fact, it makes it difficult for you to know that the plan you are joining is substandard, since it appears to have the endorsement of so many doctors.
Some states prohibit these clauses in doctors' contracts, but Pennsylvania is not yet one of them.
©2000 Eileen K. Carpenter, MD