Doctors and the Cost of Care

With respect to the AMA and the Health Insurance cartel, we need facts not spin (Doctors and the Cost of Care, New York Times Week in Review, June 14, 2009: 7).

Fact, for nearly forty years the AMA has opposed improvement in health care coverage. Spin, the AMA now claims that it can control costs and improve coverage.

Fact, for nearly forty years, the Insurance industry has opposed improving coverage. Spin, they now claim that they can control costs and provide universal coverage.

They are not to be believed.

Only a competing single payer system will do. The call for a trigger is absurd. If the industry had the will it could have done what it proposes sometime in the past forty years. It has not, giving them a few more years would be an unreasonable waste of time during which many would remain uninsured.

The idea of small cooperatives is also un workable. That is the same formula that the industry imposed with the drug plan -- small cooperatives can bargain with the drug cartels (I mean the pharmaceutical companies) but the government cannot bring its massive purchasing power to bear. That plan has no hope of cost reduction.

We must vote for a single payer competitor to be in the mix.


Sent to New York Times