Policy 06/13/2009

• Ezra Klein – Hardball on Health Care?

  tags: Policy

  • I am a family physician, and a member of the American Medical Association. They do not speak for me. I strongly disagree with their original stance in opposition to the public health insurance option. I am frustrated by their backpedaling in an attempt to be present at the bargaining table when the public insurance plan is shaped, in what presumably will be attempts to water it down to protect physician payments.
    Every single primary care physician I know supports the public health insurance plan. Note that I said EVERY SINGLE PRIMARY CARE physician.
    The AMA voting structure gives every specialty one vote. Specialists and subspecialists far outnumber the five primary care specialties–family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics. Their financial interest is to get full inflated price for patient care from private insurance companies, while simply refusing to see the uninsured or those on the public programs which pay physicians less.
    As a family doctor working in a community health center, I take care of many uninsured or underinsured patients who NEED specialty care. Currently, it is a struggle to access the care they need.
    I see the public health insurance option as a way for ALL Americans to have the choice of available, affordable health care. I wholeheartedly support a strong public health insurance option.

  • thank you drjones, for reminding us what doctors actually care about.

    It makes sense that at the heart of our health care system are a vast number of highly trained working professionals who are simply decent people, wanting to take care of others. It shouldn’t be so hard for us to enable this to happen

• Ezra Klein – Listen to Atul Gawande: Insurers Aren’t the Problem in Health Care

  tags: Policy

  • I agree with your commenters here. Let’s not misunderstand Gawande’s article (which I loved, and agree with completely). He’s talking about specialist physicians divorced from whole-cost views of the patient, and recommending procedures partly because they know they’ll be paid for.

    There are protocols of medical method that take such whole costs, and lifetime care management, into account – and this is why Mayo is way cheaper.

    The McAllen model is dysfunctional, and the Mayo model needs to replace it – but still too many people in this country can’t buy into either model because they can’t afford the coverage it takes, regardless of model.

    We fix the insurance because we can. We get government weight (and thus public morality) involved in a more transparent system. Then we might stand a chance of helping the Mayo model prevail.

    The insurers themselves are happy wioth the status quo, so while they may not particularly care one way or another, they’re in the way because they lobby against any change. They are still the enemy, still the target.

    Let’s love Gawande, take the time to understand the nuances of his article, and still push very firmly to reform the insurance industry. Stay on target Ezra.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.