The evolution of health care: Implications for the training and careers of psychologists.

Congress failed to pass legislation in 1994, but the general principles guiding reform are clearly embedded in state-level legislation and the inexorable movement toward managed care in the private employer–insurer markets. These principles, legislated by statute or realized incrementally through private market reforms, present challenges and opportunities to psychology as a science and a profession. Psychologists must significantly modify the way they currently work, and university-based training programs must modify the way they educate future psychologists. The issues go beyond the dominant concern with benefit plan coverage and professional prerogatives and affect the very organizational structures in which psychologists work and the ways they get paid. Psychologists now share with every health-related science and profession the public's demand for research-based evidence of cost-effective solutions to individual and community-wide health problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)