subject: National Health Insurance - Do We Really Need It? [print this page] It is the belief of thousands of U.S doctors are asking the government to provide resources for national health coverage, which they think might be able to cover the health care needs of all Americans while also saving a substantial amount of money. After health care reform disintegrated in Congress during the Clinton administration due to the fierce lobbying from the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries, doctors contend that private sector solutions for health care reform have proven unsuccessful.
These doctors think that if Congress established a prescription drug benefit for the disabled and elderly, it would only benefit private customers and consumers wouldn't see much of a difference. The physicians would enact a single payer system, basically a more extensive version of Medicare, the government-run health care initiative for disabled and elderly people.
While the HMOs (health maintenance organizations) were originally meant to be the best chance to fix health care issues, they have ended up increasing the costs for Medicare by billions while hitting bottom with public opinion of their services. Although investor owned hospitals seemed like they would be more efficient, they've been sullied by scandals. Doctors posit that pharmaceutical companies, which have enjoyed the benefits of high profits and low taxes - in fact, the lowest in the health care industry - price their medications so high that the people who are most in need of the drugs are unable to afford them . One of the original proposals that advocated the single payer system was written up in the Journal of Medicine.
The doctors leading the fight for national health care coverage include 2 former Surgeons General, and the former Editor of one of the foremost American medical journals. Since it is obviously blowing itself up, a Harvard Medical School professor claims that the existing system will not go on much longer anyway. The single payer system is not only the best choice, it is the only possible choice.
But the American Medical Association is against a single payer, government financed health care system said the president of the association in an official press release. He said that putting a single payer system into action in the United States, will be substituting one set of difficulties for another set that are just as serious. The qualities present in single payer systems include the development of an inefficient bureaucracy which will lead to a decline of the authority of doctors and patients over important decision making powers, a slower adoption of newer technologies and facility maintenance issues, and lengthy waiting periods for obtaining basic health care services.
The American Association of Health Plans, a lobbying group that has ties to the managed care industry, strongly opposes the doctors' plan on the grounds that it would remove for-profit hospitals and health care groups. It should be noted, at least according to the American Medical Association, that the doctors that have come out in favor of the article represent only one percent of the physicians in the country. However, one doctor has remarked that this number of physicians is larger than it used to be, as many of them were once against the government health programs but now support the proposal of national health insurance for all Americans.
by: shainavina
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