In the 1960s, while working for the American Rehabilitation Foundation, Dr. Elwood formed a health policy research group called Interstudy. The group sought ways to apply business management techniques to improve health care and reduce costs. It became the UnitedHealth Group a few years later and founded the HMO, which is now one of the largest health companies in the country.
In the early 1970s, Dr. Elwood, who gave up his medical career, moved to Wyoming, entered real estate and founded the Jackson Hole Group. He talks about new medical strategies.
The group has produced a number of reports, most notably Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election, which promises to reform the health care system for millions of runaway costs and uninsured people. Was used when After Mr. Clinton’s election, Dr. Elwood, economist Alan C. Entven and others devised a blueprint for the administration’s “controlled competition” health reform proposal.
It would have united businesses and individuals into co-operatives, buying insurance from partnerships of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies competing for businesses, covering almost all uninsured Americans. The plan led by Hillary Clinton failed in 1994, but by then Dr. Elwood and his colleagues had distanced themselves from the plan over the level of regulation it would impose.
Dr. Elwood, who lived in Bellingham in northern Seattle, retired as president of the Jackson Hole Group in 2002. He and his first wife, Elizabeth Ann (Schwenck) Elwood, had three children: Deborah, Cynthia, and David. They divorced in 1990 and Elizabeth Ann later died. In 2000, he married Barbara Winch. In addition to his wife, Dr. Elwood survives with his three children and five grandchildren.
Later, he defended what was called “outcome management.” This is a national database showing how patient treatment actually works. Without such measures, he said, there was no way for healthcare providers and policy makers to know if health care was at risk to reduce costs, and there was no way to evaluate reform proposals. Insisted.
