United States health care delivery system, reform, and transition to managed care

The US health care delivery system, faced with an exponential increase in expenditures during the second part of the 20th century, was forced to explore ways to reduce costs and, at the same time, maintain a high quality of care. Managed care emerged as one of the answers and quickly became one of the predominant health care delivery models. While the cost of health care did go down, it remains unclear what the future holds. Currently, managed care is growing rapidly in publicly funded programs and the changes which are currently underway may be defining those programs in the time to come.