AMA shocker – physicians support public insurance option
A survey conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, reveals that 63% of physicians favor patients having a choice that would include both private health insurance and a public health care insurance option. An additional 10% indicated they would prefer a single-payer, universal government health program. The survey concludes that almost three-fourths of the nation’s doctors are supportive of more federal government involvement in bringing health care to Americans.
After being led to believe that the nation’s docs are deeply disgruntled over the reduced payments they receive from Medicare and Medicaid, the existing public plans, this news came as quite a surprise.
Indeed, it is the American Medical Association (AMA), traditionally the leading voice for physicians, who have opposed a public insurance option claiming that such a plan was unacceptable to its members because payment for medical services would be further reduced by an additional public medical program.
Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, an internist and researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York said,
Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country we found that physicians, regardless — whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived — the support for the public option was broad and widespread.
Via NPR
Seems the AMA needs to get in touch with its membership.
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Physicians are not supportive of the AMA and have not been for several years. I do not know a single doctor in our 45 physician staff that are currently members of AMA. Most of our physicians are supportive of insurance reform that takes some of the power over patient care from the insurers and reduces the overbearing burden of paperwork required by the insurers. The AMA lost touch with a majority of physicians over the past decade.
Very interesting that you have 45 docs and none of them are in the AMA. Is this the trend among doctors today?
In response to another comment. See in context »From what I’ve read, the AMA has about a third, maybe just a bit more, of USA physicians, and it is heavily skewed towards older members.
In response to another comment. See in context »Interesting. I had it in my mind that every doctor pretty much belongs. Obviously, not the case.
In response to another comment. See in context »Per Wikipdedia, “Physician membership in the group is thought to have decreased to 20% of practicing physicians.”
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] post: Rick Ungar – The Policy Page – AMA shocker – physicians support … AKPC_IDS += "9975,";Popularity: unranked [?] Share and [...]
In other words doctors are just as sick of the private insurance as must people who have had to interact with them are.
I guess this makes Doctors part of the “Lefty fringe” that is pushing for the public option.
Doctors who support some sort of public option do so because it means that they would get paid SOMETHING for the uninsured patients they now take care of who pay them NOTHING. Simple as that.
I do not think this poll is anywhere near accurate, by the way. I work with a large group of specialist physicians and have not heard one voice support for a public option (my very unscientific statement). What are the poll methods?
Agree that AMA does not represent “America’s Doctors” as President Obama and others have implied. I lost a lot of faith in the president when he so boldly stated “now that we have the doctors on board, we can move forward” in response to AMA’s support of his plan.
AMA is a failed physician organization that is essentially now a profit generating not-for-profit whose primary activity is selling CPT code books. They have a government supported monopoly on this multi-million dollar annual market.