New Doctors Coalition Adds Voices Of Physicians To Health Care Reform
New Doctors Coalition Adds Voices Of Physicians To Health Care Reform
Our guest blogger is Nikhil Wagle, MD, co-founder of Doctors for America.
As doctors, we see the effects of our broken health system on our patients every single day. We have seen what happens when our patients are denied the care they need, or when they lack access to preventive care, or when they cannot afford their medicines. Doctors know what’s wrong with our health care system — and have ideas about how to fix it. And yet, when it comes to health reform, doctors voices have not been heard.
Doctors for America is working to change that. We are a grassroots organization that seeks to engage physicians in healthcare reform and give them a voice. Our current membership includes over 11,000 physicians from all 50 states, with more and more members every day. Our goal is to convey the ideas and experiences of physicians to achieve healthcare reform based on four key pillars:
1) affordable coverage
2) expanded access to care
3) high quality care
4) practice environments that allow physicians to focus on patient care.
Incorporating the experiences and perspectives of individual physicians is critical to fashioning a solution to our current healthcare crisis. Right now, we’re in the midst of a nationwide campaign to make physicians’ voices heard on health reform: Voices of Physicians. Over the past two weeks, more than 1,000 physicians have added their names to a national map to share their concerns about the healthcare system. As lawmakers put together health reform legislation, it is imperative that they know physicians’ priorities for reform. Voices of Physicians allows physicians from all across the country – the individuals who see our broken healthcare system firsthand each and every day –- to tell Congress and the public what concerns us most about the current healthcare system, and what can be done to allow us to take better care of our patients.
At Doctors for America, we believe that physicians must continue to make our voices heard on critical issues in health reform. Over the next six weeks, we will launch a series of one-week campaigns, each focused on a specific issue of relevance to the health reform effort. The goal will be to educate physicians and the public about these issues and allow the opinions of physicians to be conveyed to Congress and the media. Together, we will continue to build a strong coalition of physicians and patient and professional organizations committed to health care reform.
Ask your doctor how he or she would fix our health care system — and tell them to add their voice to the map. And please visit us at www.drsforamerica.org for more information or to get involved.
7 Responses to “New Doctors Coalition Adds Voices Of Physicians To Health Care Reform”
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My doctor wants Canadian-style single payer, but Max Baucus would rather have single payer advocates arrested than insult his insurance industry paymasters by hearing us. What will Doctors for America do to address that kind of graft?
“During the 2008 presidential campaign, [DfA was] known as Doctors for Obama….”
Let’s hope, for the sake of your own credibility, that you remain true to the vision for healthcare reform described by Obama during the campaign: a universal public plan alternative essentially equivalent to the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:58 amYou know what might be helpful in that post? How some actual policy changes they want. The 4-point list given is vague to the point of meaninglessness, and the whole thing reads like what the “About Us” section on their website might say.
I’m all for hearing what doctors have to say, but to build a rational health care system we need to speak in specifics, i.e. wonk-language, rather than emotionally-charged abstractions.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:56 amGovernment funded health care is cruel, because it prolongs suffering to those who really need the care, like the elderly and very sick. It also raises health care cost making it unaffordable to everyone, including government. This is why government health care often causes health care rationing, shortages, and diminished quality of care.
It also leaves people lives in the hands of government bureaucrats who will decide if you qualify for care. After all, where do you go if the government denies your care because it is too expensive, as it often does with the elderly or to those who statistically are going to die anyway!
What does the doctor do when he or she is not paid or told what kind of care the needs to be offered?
There is a reason why cures for sickness are found here and not in other places in the world. There is a reason why the really sick come here.
May 9th, 2009 at 11:17 amtk: what are the sources for your claims? They are false. The life expectancy here is shorter than in 44 other countries, the vast majority of which have government care — and those countries all spend less on health care per capita than we do in the U.S. Similarly for infant mortality — we’re also 45th but that’s down from 28th in 1998.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:36 pmThere, fixed that for you.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:27 amThe U.S. Health Care: Anarchy And Apathy
What follows are believed to be facts that are believed to exist regarding the present U.S. Health Care System. This may be why about 80 percent of U.S. citizens understandably want our health care system overhauled desperately due to the inadequate health care they receive and access:
The U.S. is ranked number 42 related to life expectancy and infant mortality, which is rather low.
However, the U.S. is ranked number one in the world for spending the most for health care- as well as being number one for those with chronic diseases. About 125 million people have such diseases. This is about 70 percent of the Medicare budget that is spent treating these terrible illnesses.
Health Care costs are now well over 2 trillion dollars of our gross domestic product. This is three times the amount nearly 20 years ago- and 8 times the amount it was about 30 years ago. Most is spent with medical institutions, as far as health expenditures are concerned.
One third of that amount is nothing more than administrative toxic waste that does not involve the restoration of the health of others. This illustrates how absurd the U.S. Health Care System is presently. Nearly 7000 dollars is spent on every citizen for health care every year, and that, too, is more than anyone else in the world.
We have around 50 million citizens without any health insurance, which may cause about 20 thousand deaths per year. This includes millions of children without health care, which is added to the planned or implemented cuts in the government SCHIP program for children, which alone covers about 7 million kids.
Our children.
Nearly half of the states in the U.S. are planning on or have made cuts to Medicaid, which covers about 60 million people, and those on Medicaid are in need of this coverage is largely due to unemployment. With these Medicaid cuts, over a million people will lose their health care coverage and benefits to a damaging degree.
About 70 percent of citizens have some form of health insurance, and the premiums for their insurance have increased nearly 90 percent in the past 8 years. About 45 percent of health care is provided by our government- which is predicted to experience a severe financial crisis in the near future with some government health care programs, it has been reported.
Half of all patients do not receive proper treatment to restore their health, it has been stated. Medical errors desperately need to be reduced as well, it has been reported, which should be addressed as well.
Most doctors want a single payer health care system, which would save about 400 billion dollars a year- about 20 percent less than what we are paying now. The American College of Physicians, second in size only to the American Medical Association, supports a single payer health care system.
The AMA, historically opposed to a single payer health care system, has close to half of its members in favor of this system. Less than a third of all physicians are members of the AMA, according to others.
Our health care we offer citizens is the present system is sort of a hybrid of a national and private health care system that has obviously mutated to a degree that is incapable of being fully functional due to perhaps copious amounts and levels of individual and legal entities.
Health Care must be the priority immediately by the new administration and congress. Challenges include the 700 billion dollars that have been pledged with the financial bailout that will occur, since the proposed health care plan of the next administration is projected to cost over a trillion dollars within the first year or so of the proposed plan to recalibrate health care for all of us in the U.S.
Likely, hundreds of billions of dollars that are speculated to be saved with a reform of the country’s health care system. Health policy analysts should not be greatly concerned on the health care corporate shareholders who may be affected by this reform of our health care system that is desperately needed.
It is estimated that the U.S. needs presently tens of thousands more primary care physicians to fully satisfy the necessities of those members of the public health. This specialty makes possibly less than 100 thousand dollars annually in income, compared with other physician specialties, yet they are and have been the backbone of the U.S. health care system.
The American College of Physicians believes that a patient centered national health care workforce policy is needed to address these issues that would ideally restructure the payment policies that exist presently with primary care physicians.
Further vexing is that it is quite apparent that we have some greedy health care corporations that take advantage of our health care system. Over a billion dollars was recovered for Medicare and Medicaid fraud last year through settlements paid to the department of Justice because some organizations who deliberately ripped off taxpayers.
These are the taxpayers in the U.S. who have a fragmented health care system with substantial components and different levels of government- composed of several legal entities and individuals, which has resulted in medical anarchy, so it seems.
Thanks to various corporations infecting our Health Care System in the United States, the following variables sum up this system as it exists today. Perhaps the United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) is the best solution to meet our health care needs as citizens, it appears.
We would finally have, as with most other countries, a Universal Health Care system that will allow free choice of doctors and hospitals, potentially, and health care for all completely. It should and likely will be funded by a combination of payroll taxes and general tax revenue which is realistically possible. Because the following seems to be in need of repair regarding the U.S. Health Care System:
Access- citizens do not have the right or ability to make use of this system as we should.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:29 amEfficiency- this system strives on creating much waste and expense as it possibly can.
Quality- the standard of excellence we deserve as citizens with our health care is missing in action.
Sustainability- We as citizens cannot continue to keep our health care system in as it is designed at this time- as it exists today.
http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/US_healthcare/index.asp
Dan Abshear
I told my new dermatologist, who is all for universal health care, my deepest fear last Tuesday.
I told him that both my father and sister had basil cell carcinomas. My father’s dermatologist struggled (successfully) to save his nose (he was in his 70s-80s maybe) and my sister (late 50s) already had two removed from her nose. She said the MOHS procedure caused her to look like she had a third nostril!
Despite using heavy duty sun skin and being extra careful in the sun, I told him I was afraid I might eventually get one, and because I am over 60 (I am 62) no one would remove it. I would them be forced to watch it grow little by little — and watch my face rot — knowing full well the technology was out there to help me — but was being denied me because I was too old and dear old Uncle Sam needed to spend the money on someone younger. I might be offered the needle to die with dignity before my face became too gross and before I smelled so bad I would gross out whoever came in contact with me.
The doctor said — and I quote:
“That could happen.”
He seemed just fine with it, too.
This is the only face I have and while it has a few wrinkles, it isn’t bad looking for a 62 year old…..
If I sound angry, well, I guess you could say I am! Right now I have great benefits as part of my retirement package. My retirement system won’t continue letting me get my good coverage (I pay a small part of it) through them if it is offered through Uncle!
Fortunately, both of my parents are dead. So I won’t have to watch them be denied treatment while it goes to some more deserving (in Uncle’s opinion) younger person.
B & T
May 14th, 2009 at 6:00 pm