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Doctors and Patients Agree
She said his plan doesn't cover everyone; he said she backs an unwise mandate to force people to buy health insurance. She said covering everyone is the heart of the insurance issue; he said cost is what really counts.
And at the end of the back-and-forth between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during a February debate in Cleveland, moderator Brian Williams of NBC News let out what amounted to an exasperated, if polite, sigh. "Well, a 16-minute discussion on health care is certainly a start," Williams said. "I'd like to change up."
Well, Americans would like to change up, too-up to a less expensive, less irrational health insurance system in which 47 million people aren't left out of coverage. Up to a system in which those who are lucky enough to have coverage aren't confronted with continually rising co-payments and deductibles and convoluted schemes for limiting payment when someone gets really, really sick.
It turns out their doctors want to move up, too. They are way ahead of politicians in daring to go where the rest of the industrialized world has already gone: to a national health insurance system.
New research by the Indiana University School of Medicine shows that 59 percent of doctors support legislation to establish a national health insurance system, up from 49 percent in 2002. Only 32 percent of doctors said they were opposed. A slightly lower percentage, 55 percent, agreed with a different question on what researchers considered "incremental" reform-that is, one that relies on tweaking the existing employer-based insurance system and filling in the gaps from there.
"National health insurance is national health insurance," says Aaron Carroll, director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at the medical school. "They [doctors] support a plan where there is government legislation to establish government financing for health care-a Medicare-for-all type of plan."
In this campaign, which has offered a bumper crop of politicians and a thicket of platitudes about the American health insurance system, no one except Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who long ago abandoned his presidential run, has proposed a national, single-payer system of insurance. The fear factor keeps politicians well behind doctors, even though many physicians might see their incomes shrink under a national health insurance plan.
Carroll says that what struck him most about his current data, compared with the 2002 survey, is the extent to which doctors in every specialty increased their support for a national health plan. "Every group went up that we measured," he told me. Those who back national health insurance the strongest are psychiatrists, who see mentally ill people suffer from some insurers' outright ban on coverage for mental health, or from low reimbursement rates for mental health treatment. Those in pediatrics and emergency medicine were also strong supporters. "Most of the people who are exposed to the uninsured are in primary care, or they're psychiatrists-and emergency physicians who have to see people come into the ER without insurance all the time," Carroll says.
Carroll's center studies how health care is delivered in the United States, assessing its cost, quality and patients' access. By all those measures, he says, things have gotten worse in the past decade. That's one reason opinion polls taken during the past year or more have shown an increasing proportion of the public warming to national health insurance, even when the questions include the caveat that taxes might have to be raised to pay for it.
So, as they tend to say in those drug-company ads, doctors and patients agree.
It's the politicians who are lacking in courage, too cautious to confront the fear tactics that the insurance industry, the drug industry and other big players roll out every time. As for interest groups that represent doctors, Carroll says, those organizations supporting only incremental reform appear to be out of step. "We know what the representative groups are saying. We wanted to see what actual physicians believe."
Belief isn't political action, and it comes up awfully short against the lobbyists' talking points opposing national health insurance-the same arguments made against the creation of Medicare back in the 1960s. So maybe a bit of common sense is in order. "Nobody ever says, 'Let's get rid of Medicare,' " Carroll says. "Nobody says, this is horrible, we've got to go back the other way."
We should go forward instead.
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
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15 Comments so far
Show AllSingle Payer healthcare, readily and completely available to ALL.... it's the ONLY way to go.
The only way to even APPROACH single payer is to first elect a liberal (Obama would be fine) president together with a liberal (Democratic majority) Congress and give it a whirl with the public. Republicans remaining anywhere in sight will block it until Republicans are voted out of sight. You can try now or 10, or 20, or 30, or 40 years from now. The necessary process and order of events will be the same. Sooner, though, would be better, since less individuals and entire families would be bankrupted than if we wait through several more decades of corporate profiteering from the medicine and insurance games.
Forget Obama, Hillary, or Mccain. Here's one candidate who actually supports and fights for single-payer. Please meet RALPH NADER !
http://www.votenader.org
The higher taxes argument is BS, just taking money out of one pocket to put it in another. If you have health coverage in this country, and the nation moves to a single payer system, the abolition of insurance premia will more than cover the cost to the Treasury.
I can't agree with Marie Cocco that it's fear making politicians cautious. Unless she means fear of losing corporate money. It's about lobbyist money.
We will get single payer health care when we get publicly financed election campaigns. Face it, the corporations are spending hundreds of millions on our politicians and for them it's worth it, they get billions in return from the politicians - of OUR money!
kathyodat
How can a purported "Christian nation" not only fail, but REFUSE, to heal the sick, provide shelter for the Homeless, feed the Hungry?
Simple. A "Christian" is not a follower of Christ's words.
A "Christian" follows everyone's words BUT Christ's.
BeForKids April 3rd, 2008 1:51 pm:
"It's about lobbyist money."
Right again, BeForKids. US congress people spend most days after their election raising money. They raise money by doing what the lobbyists tell them to do. If they raise enough money, they can stay where they are. If they raise enough money, long enough, the can become lobbyists themselves.
In many democracies, there is either public or a mix of public/private financing. Purely public financing reduces corruption. Does reduced corruption sound like something the US could benefit from?
Has anyone tried to educate Obama on single payer?
Garvey: tell me about it. I don't have dental insurance and I can't even get a small child dental care suffering with a toothache. I hope every one of those single bastards rot in hell.
Bernice, Obama doesn't need education on single payer. He became an Illinois state senator wanting to get it passed but realized that it wouldn't happen without the "right person in the White House and the right people in Congress". That part is our job.
kathyodat
So sorry, deep throat. Get the homeopathic remedy Staphysagria, the highest potency you can find and give one pellet every five minutes until the pain is gone.
kathyodat
I have 'insurance" but since the insurance companies can claim conveniently that a procedure is "experimental" whenever they don't want to pay for it (or they will pay only a part of a bill because it should reflect what they deem "reasonable cost"), it's almost as if I have no insurance at all. My brother is on disability, does not work, does not pay taxes, does not pay for any kind of health insurance. Yet he was able to get an expensive procedure for his eye wholly covered (by the government). However, I work two jobs, see much of my pay eaten up by taxes and health insurance costs, yet have to pay "out of pocket" for my eye procedure. I still haven't even gotten it done because it's too expensive and the clinic needs the money up front (because much of it depends on a very expensive drug). I am now suffering with one eye disabled, working like a dog, fighting the insurance companies (I have two plans!) wondering WHAT IS GOING ON HERE???!!!! My brother gets it free from the government and I pay a for-profit company to provide nothing??? I would drop the plans so I can save up my own money to buy the procedure (how ironic, eh?), but I have dependents and I don't want them not to be covered at all. This is just a ridiculous situation. It's absolutely correct that we would pay less (probably half as much from the calculations various economists have made) for government-run care. And I'd actually get my eye surgery....
I hope, along with deep throat, that "every one of the bastards [so-called health insurers] rots in hell".
This is how you get a single payer or national health insurance system:
1) when listening to candidates talk about health care DO NOT confuse the phrase "universal health care" with proposals for a single payer system. ALL politicians, even George Bush, I might guess, would support the CONCEPT of "universal health care" or health care for everybody, but unless the candidate's PLAN calls specifically for "single payor" or "national health insurance" or "medicare for all", their version of "universal health care" is nothing more than tweaking the current inadequate, dysfunctional system. Any plan that talks about giving you a "choice" of insurance plans is simply rearranging the deck chairs. Neither the remaining Dem. nor the Rep. cand. offer(s) anything approaching what WE need. "Subsidizing" your payment does little for your healthcare but fattens the insurance companies' profits which is why you don't hear THEM complaining.
2) look for a candidate that specifically proposes a single payer system. I know of at least one, Nader (Kucinich before him). There may be others.
3) explain the difference to everyone you know and tell them about the candidate.
4) vote for that candidate.
I disagree with the person who said we won't get a single payer system until we get public financing for campaigns. We can't wait that long; health care is on life support already. We WILL get such a system when enough of us vote only for those candidates who support it, refuse to vote for those that don't, make this very clear to them and stick to our guns. Yes folks, it is that simple and we better do it lickety-split.
WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stopped telling a story of a pregnant woman's medical tragedy after an Ohio hospital challenged its accuracy last weekend.
Since early March, the New York senator has often told campaign audiences a heartbreaking story of a young Ohio woman who began having problems with her pregnancy. She said the woman was twice turned away by a local hospital because she had no health insurance and could not pay a $100 minimum charge.
Sen. Clinton said the woman returned a third time "in an ambulance. And they worked hard to stabilize her, and she lost her baby. Then they airlifted her to Columbus to the medical center, and HAD TO DODGE SERBIAN SNIPER FIRE!!!
deep throat and collinsa - I am very sorry. Your dilemmas are so prevalent.
Dental care is essential to overall health and should be part of a health plan. Untreated dental problems can lead to death from heart failure or other effects of septicemia. Not to speak of the difficulty of getting a job with teeth missing.
Re: Obama. In response to solicitation, I have written to Obama campaign and made my (meager) support conditional on certain basic things. One is single payer insurance. Of course this scared him so much that he immediately changed his policy.
He doesn't need my support, since lots of people are sending him money and volunteering for him based on faith, hope and / or desperation. However, it might help if more people talked with him and his idealistic volunteers.