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Medical Miracle: Doctors Embracing Reform
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Apr 06, 2009 03:25pm |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Wednesday, February 4, 2009 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | 02.04.2009
Harold Pollack is a public health policy researcher at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, where he is faculty chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies. He is a regular contributor to The Treatment.
For years, the medical profession has lagged only the insurers as a designated bogeyman for many who favor health reform. If only doctors weren’t so overpaid and professionally dominant, we would have a cheaper and fairer medical system that would emphasize primary care rather than so much expensive poking, prodding, and scribbling on a prescription pad. At least so the arguments go.
Frequently enough in this drama, physicians’ visible organized presence, the American Medical Association, has willingly played a villain from central casting. My favorite example was when the AMA feared that immunization clinics would lead to socialized medicine. Medicare and other programs were pushed through Congress despite significant opposition from the very same medical providers who would later profit greatly from such legislation. Medical specialty organizations have wrongly opposed comparative effectiveness research. They fear--often quite accurately--that serious research would cast doubt on the value and cost-effectiveness of dicey medications, interventions, and procedures.
Whatever the professions’ view might have been decades ago, increasing numbers of physicians have come to favor fundamental healthcare financing and delivery reforms. On the left, Physicians for a National Health Care Program boasts 16,000 members. Although single-payer remains a minority preference among doctors, attitudes have clearly shifted. The April 2009 Journal of General Internal Medicine includes an article by Dan McCormick and colleagues that documents this shift. |
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