America's Physicians Are Calling for an Ambulance

[FayeforCure]

The turnabout for doctors on health care reform
by Todd Huffman, guest opinion
Wednesday May 13, 2009, 10:39 AM

Todd HuffmanFor most of the last century, no single group operated as a bigger obstacle to universal health care than organized medicine. Today, perhaps no single group stands more united in support of some form of universal coverage.

Previous to their lost battle against Lyndon Johnson and Medicare, the opposition of major medical organizations and individual physicians guaranteed doom for various state and presidential efforts to establish either a national health plan or other means to achieve universal health insurance.


Now, surveys reveal overwhelming numbers of physicians resentful toward the current health care system, which fixes their reimbursements and regulates patient care, and piles them with paperwork so unending the average doctor has little time left over to challenge the status quo.

Add to all this the frustration felt at seeing their uninsured and underinsured patients go without recommended care, and at struggling with the cost of health care insurance for their own employees, and what emerges is a prescription for widespread physician support of radical reform. Over four-fifths of physicians now agree that either fundamental changes are needed in our health care system, or that it needs completely rebuilt.

On April 27th, 44 national physician organizations wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to outline their common goals and strategies "for improving health care delivery and making affordable, high-quality care available to all Americans." The co-signatories included the largest groups representing America's family physicians, internists, obstetricians and gynecologists, and surgeons.

The letter reflects the results of a national survey of physicians published in April 2008 by the Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that only a small fraction of U.S. physicians supported leaving the U.S. health care financing system as it is. Nearly half favored either tax incentives or penalties to encourage the purchase of medical insurance, and four in 10 preferred a government-run, taxpayer financed national health insurance program.

These findings challenge the public perception that American doctors are unsympathetic to growing public and political call for an overhaul of our costly and deeply unequal current health care system. Nine in 10 physicians in fact agreed that all American should receive needed medical care regardless of ability to pay. Physician attitudes have undergone a marked turnabout in the last four decades.

Support for universal coverage runs highest among psychiatrists, pediatricians, emergency physicians, internists, and family physicians. Radiologists were the least supportive, followed by anesthesiologists, and surgical sub-specialists. Of course, within any group, opinion is not unanimous.

While there remains significant disagreement among physicians at how best to change it, most recognize that the status quo must go. During the past few decades doctors have become well acquainted with managed care by way of the private insurance industry. Most have realized it to be as arbitrary, overbearing, and impersonal as they always feared the government might be, all without the redeeming benefit of universal coverage.

America's health care system is sick, and in immediate need of intensive care. No less urgently than everyone else, America's physicians are calling for an ambulance.

Todd Huffman of Eugene is a physician and medical director of Head Start of Lane County.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/05/the_turnabout_for_doctors_on_h.html

[BridgeTroll]

While there remains significant disagreement among physicians at how best to change it, most recognize that the status quo must go. During the past few decades doctors have become well acquainted with managed care by way of the private insurance industry. Most have realized it to be as arbitrary, overbearing, and impersonal as they always feared the government might be, all without the redeeming benefit of universal coverage.

This sums up my position pretty accurately.