While this change is not necessarily good or bad, it does change the 'rules of the game,' especially for health care providers such as physicians and hospitals. The patient's choice of which specialist or hospital to use is no longer made by the patient or his or her personal physician, but depends on the insurance company's or the HMO's provider list. The managed care companies do have quality criteria for inclusion on their lists, but the bottom line is acceptance of their fee schedule by the provider. El Paso has experienced little managed care penetration, primarily because of its geographic isolation and its low per-capita income. However, this is changing with the introduction of several HMOs and Texas Medicaid changing to managed care in a year's time.
Cheese balls are great as desserts, too.
A chocolate cheese ball tops off a meal nicely, as do tassies filled with pecan, chocolate, maple, cranberry or lemon curd. Last month Lee, the chief financial officer of Mirage Resorts in Las Vegas, got a two-page query from Harrah's Entertainment Inc., asking whether Mirage's computers are ready for the new millennium. Harrah's asked, requesting titles, names and phone numbers. Such letters are common now as companies rush to ensure that their computers will be able to cope when the date rolls from 1999 to 2000. Hoping to avoid breakdowns and legal liability for year 2000 problems, they are seeking blanket assurances from people they do business with that they, too, are millennium-prepared.