As proposals for a government-sponsored public health care plan are being debated, it is no surprise that the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance companies are pulling out the big guns to fight it. They reap huge profits from our current system. It is also no surprise that the American Medical Association has added its voice to the fight against a public plan. They have consistently come out against anything that threatens the status quo. However, the AMA does not speak for all physicians.
The health care system in this country is broken. The United States has the highest health care costs in the world and the WHO ranks us 37th in quality. We currently have 46 million uninsured citizens, and many more are under-insured. Employer-sponsored health care, Medicare and Medicaid spending has doubled in the last eight years. In my years of practice, I have observed health care providers and patients alike becoming increasingly frustrated with the way we care for the sick in this country. In my practice, many people have come to me with advanced, incurable cancers that could have been treated earlier if they had had coverage. There are many places in this country that are underserved. Try finding a primary care physician in Anchorage if you are on Medicare. Many Americans are losing their homes and 50 percent of all bankruptcies are related to health- care debt.
Physicians are worried that their compensation will decrease, red tape will increase, their autonomy will be lost and quality will suffer with a new system. This fear is justified. Physicians should be compensated well. They spend many years in training, ending with a mountain of debt. They work long hours, sacrifice their private lives, live under a lot of stress and incur a great deal of liability. We need to attract the best and the brightest to have a superior health care system. Some physicians are woefully underpaid, especially those in primary care. Nurses, who are the unsung heroes of patient care, fare even worse.
However, I feel we need a government-sponsored health plan to compete with private insurers who are driven by profit. Private insurers already ration health care by deciding who is covered and what is covered. Sick people cut into their profits. Just the threat of a public plan has already driven the private sector to cover more people.
Some would argue that health care is a privilege. I disagree. I feel that in a developed, wealthy, educated society it is a right and measure of that society's success. We now have a rare opportunity to roll up our sleeves and attempt to fix this expensive, unfair and ineffective system. Many physicians support a government plan; the AMA does not speak for all of us.
Ruth Higdon, M.D., lives in Talkeetna.
By RUTH HIGDON, M.D.