The Problem More and more, managed health care in Nevada and the United States is failing to meet patient needs. The fundamental promise of managed care was to hold down health care costs without sacrificing quality, yet it has failed to do either well. Additionally, one third of Americans are not insured, thus have little or no health care. As more than four in ten insured Americans are now covered by a managed care plan, millions of women are faced with the complicated task of trying to meet their reproductive health care needs within the scope of managed care practices. A woman s reproductive years span, on average, half of her lifetime.
Health care needs change throughout the life cycle.
The coordination of care that is such a strength of managed care systems may also threaten the patient confidentiality that is critical to the willingness of patients to seek sensitive services. Special consideration must be given to adolescents seeking reproductive health care. Nevada s teen pregnancy rate ranks fourth highest in the nation, with that rate increasing nearly twice as fast as the national rate. Proposals to require parental consent for contraceptive services for teens would not reduce adolescent sexual activity, as some claim. In fact, studies show that teens seeking family planning services for the first time have already been sexually active for nearly a year, on average.