“Well, now they’ve done it! Now they want to insulate the danged ‘minute clinics!’ According to a Boston Globe news story, the recent rise in low-cost walk-in clinics in various chain-drugstores … has attracted the interest of the HMO world, at least in Massachusetts. As the story, Insurers to cover drugstore clinic visits, reports, both Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan have signed contracts with CVS Caremark … seeking to ‘cover’ most of the costs of patient visits to their clinics, by offering reduced ‘co-pays’ to those under their umbrellas who seek care there. To some, this might seem a good thing, since it means much lower co-payments from the patients than those exacted for … doctor’s offices or emergency rooms. … However, this could merely perpetuate what got us into the healthcare mess in the first place: the employee benefit, third-party payor, institutionalized model for maintaining wellness. (07/24/08)