[Antiracism] [Workers Rights/Health Care Action] Doctors endorse single-payer

[WMass Jobs With Justice]

Copyright 2007 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC
All Rights Reserved 

The Philadelphia Inquirer
	

December 4, 2007 Tuesday 
CITY-D Edition 
	

BUSINESS; P-com Biz; Pg. C02 
	

532 words
	
	
Doctors endorse single-payer; 
College of Physicians said it backed the system because access to health
care had deteriorated.	 
	

By Stacey Burling; Inquirer Staff Writer
	


The Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians - the nation's
second-largest physician group - endorsed a single-payer health-care system
yesterday. 

But the organization stopped short of saying that a single-payer system like
Medicare, in which the government would get and pay most bills, is the best
way to achieve universal health coverage. 

The group said the country also could do that through expansion of the
current mix of private insurance and government coverage. Under the
proposal, people would be required to get health insurance. 

While some physicians have formed organizations that push for single-payer,
David Dale, president of the College of Physicians, said his was the largest
general-interest doctor group to support the controversial idea. 

The group said change was necessary because access to health care had
deteriorated. 

The largest physician group in the United States, the American Medical
Association, does not support single-payer. Earlier this year, it released a
proposal to expand insurance coverage, primarily through tax incentives and
changes in insurance regulations. 

The College of Physicians' membership includes 124,000 internal-medicine
physicians and related specialists. 

After analyzing health care in the United States and 12 other industrialized
countries, the group concluded that universal coverage had been successfully
achieved elsewhere through single-payer and pluralistic systems. 

Either could work here, the report said. The pluralistic system gives
consumers more choice, but also leads to higher administrative costs and
inequalities. Because it is what the United States already has, it is less
of a political challenge. "It's like remodeling your house to make it better
for your whole family," Dale said. 

Single-payer has lower administrative costs, but is not politically popular,
he said. "I'm not a political analyst. I'm just a doctor," Dale said. "But I
think there will probably be resistance to that. That's why we don't have it
now." He said his group added it to its proposal to "heighten the debate." 

Thomas E. Getzen, a professor of insurance and health management at Temple
University, said doctors had long resisted single-payer systems for fear it
would give the government more control over them. 

Because much of the growth in expense in the current system is in procedures
performed by specialists or in increased use of technology like MRIs,
doctors who work in those areas have the most to fear from a single-payer
system, Getzen said. Internists, who serve as primary-care doctors for many
people, have less to fear. 

The College of Physicians also called for better payments for primary-care
doctors to help avert a shortage and for the creation of a uniform billing
system and greater use of electronic health records to reduce administrative
costs. 

Dale said that some U.S. doctors and hospitals were better than their
counterparts in other nations, but that this country's health system
compares poorly. "Part of our call is, 'Look around, guys, and see how other
people are doing,' " he said, "and they're doing better than us." 

Contact staff writer Stacey Burling at 215-854-4944 or HYPERLINK
"mailto:sburling at phillynews.com"sburling at phillynews.com.

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.13/1165 - Release Date: 12/2/2007
8:34 PM
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.hampshire.edu/pipermail/antiracism/attachments/20071204/5fec3a18/attachment.htm>