Advocate \ad-ve-kat\.verb verb, part of speech typically used to indicate an action. English verbs are inflected for person, number, tense and partially for mood; compound verbs formed with auxiliaries (e.g., be, can, have, do, will) provide a distinction of voice. : to support; to plead plead v. 1) in civil lawsuits and petitions, the filing of any document (pleading) including complaints, petitions, declarations, motions, and memoranda of points and authorities. in favor of upon the side of; favorable to; for the advantage of. See also: favor ; noun noun [Lat.,=name], in English, part of speech of vast semantic range. It can be used to name a person, place, thing, idea, or time. It generally functions as subject, object, or indirect object of the verb in the sentence, and may be distinguished by a number of : a person who acts on behalf of a cause Here at the National MS Society, we urge people to be self-advocates first--to become educated consumers in order to get the most out of available insurance programs. At the same time, we know self-advocacy Self-advocacy is an important term in the disability rights movement. It is also used in regard to patients taking control of their own care in the medical system. Self-advocacy and disability is not enough. We are in a crisis. We're not in a health care crisis; we are in a health insurance crisis. It started with the rapid rise of healthcare costs in the 1980s, a rise so steep it raised fears about national productivity and competitiveness. In response, insurance providers--both the government and industry--moved to control costs by developing managed care systems. Managed care was meant to get rid of inefficiency and inappropriate treatments, and, indeed, it slowed cost increases. But people began finding that treatment decisions could be based on cost rather than the best medical practice. Advocacy provides an answer to these treatment problems. (See page 25 for an overview of the Society's involvement in health insurance advocacy at the state level.) This work will not be finished until every individual has protections that include the right to see a specialist, the right to an external appeal, the right to medical record privacy, and the right to receive all needed treatments and therapies. The crisis doesn't end here. We have nearly reached the limit of cost reduction through managed care--and insurance costs are rising again. Now we are seeing inroads inroads Noun, pl make inroads into to start affecting or reducing: my gambling has made great inroads into my savings inroads npl to make inroads into [+ on the concept of pooled risk. It's a basic insurance principle that the larger the pool, the easier it is to absorb the expense of the more costly members. Today, more and more insurers are offering healthier people lower premiums (and more limited coverage), forcing those whose needs are greater into a smaller pool of their own. We've seen examples of premiums offered people with MS at 6 times the rate of those for people at low risk. Advocacy will be required to address this inequity. With active volunteers and outreach Outreach is an effort by an organization or group to connect its ideas or practices to the efforts of other organizations, groups, specific audiences or the general public. to other like-minded organizations, we can and will advocate together for patient protections and for reasonably priced healthcare insurance for all people. |
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