PPO and HMO are symptoms of our terrible US health system. They are focused on cost control, not positive outcomes. Basically they are middle-men between doct

PPO and HMO are symptoms of our terrible US health system. They are focused on cost control, not positive outcomes. Basically they are middle-men between doctors and their patients. They get to approve/deny care choices. They get to decide, ex post facto, whether or not they will pay for healthcare services, medicines, etc. Here in the US, you can get surprise medical bills greater than $10k USD, due to these organizations saying "nope, not gonna pay for that." While in some cases, homeotherapy, and similar, this is justified ... in many/most cases, it really isn't. HMO/PPO etc are all about reducing cost of the care, with these organizations funding themselves from driving down the cost of the the service. Doctors have to hire people to handle dealing with the insurance companies (HMO/PPO/etc.) Its expensive and time consuming to deal with them.