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Politics : HOWARD DEAN -THE NEXT PRESIDENT? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (75)	8/10/2003 8:28:48 PM
From: KyrosL	Respond to of 3079

I don't know Dean's position on drug prices. Canada has price controls. That's what a nationalized health care system can do. It's take it or leave it for the drug companies -- and they NEVER leave it, cause manufacturing the drugs is dirt cheap. I think all these problems will be solved once we get a national health care system like all the other developed countries.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (75)	8/12/2003 4:32:13 PM
From: KyrosL	Respond to of 3079

Doctors Call for Universal Health Insurance "it would not only be more fair, but would be cheaper and more efficient than the current patchwork system." I can also guarantee that businesses would love it. I am mystified why Republicans are not supporting this. story.news.yahoo.com Doctors Call for Universal Health Insurance 21 minutes ago Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 7,000 doctors, including two former surgeons general, called for universal health insurance for the United States on Tuesday, saying it would not only be more fair, but would be cheaper and more efficient than the current patchwork system. "We endorse a fundamental change in U.S. health care -- the creation of a national health insurance program," the doctors wrote in a special communication to the Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites). The doctors, who have an Internet Web site at pnhp.org, say Americans are overpaying for medical care and point out that 41 million lack any kind of health insurance at all. Unlike countries such as Canada, Britain and France, the United States relies on a combination of private and government health care. Most Americans are insured through their employers, but small employers are not required and often not able to provide health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid offer care to patients who are old enough, disabled enough or poor enough to qualify for the state-federal health plan, but many doctors do not participate. States trying to balance budgets have been forced to cut Medicaid and Medicare services. "In our market-driven system, insurers and providers compete not so much by increasing quality or lowering costs, but by avoiding unprofitable patients and shifting costs back to patients or to other payers," the group, who call themselves Physicians for a National Health Program, wrote in JAMA. "This creates the paradox of a health care system based on avoiding the sick." SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM They call for a single-payer system, in which government pays for health care but keeps the delivery of health care under mostly private control. Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites), said the group's proposal would not lead to socialized medicine, and denied that it would lead to an inefficient bureaucracy. "We should remember that the government is representative of the public that elects it and we are responsible for it," she said at a news conference. "An investor-owned insurance company reports to its owners, not to the public." Former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said the current system ensures that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities are more likely to lack insurance than whites. He said 4,700 more black babies than white babies died by the age of 1 because of such disparities. "The world's richest health care system is unable to ensure basics like prenatal care and immunizations, and we trail most of the developed world on such indicators as infant mortality and life expectancy," the doctors wrote. The AMA itself came out in opposition to the plan. "A solution to the problem of the uninsured is desperately needed -- but a single-payer health care system is not the answer," AMA President Dr. Donald Palmisano said in a statement. "Long waits for health care services, a slowness to adopt new technologies and maintain facilities, and development of a large bureaucracy that can cause a decline in the authority of patients and their physicians over clinical decision-making are all hallmarks of the single-payer system. " Private insurers agreed. "The American people do not want to stifle the innovation and quality that the private sector enables," said Mike Tuffin, a spokesman for the American Association of Health Plans.