“Remember the 1990s” retrospective lists always include Nirvana, Monica Lewinsky and Wayne’s World, but leave out another major product that defined American life in the ’90s: the health maintenance organization, or HMO — that nefarious health-insurance plan that seemed expressly designed to prevent you from seeing the doctor of your choice or receiving the treatments recommended by doctors, all under the guise of lowering costs and “improving” medical care.
