"Doctors, too, are ready for CHANGE" | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

"Doctors, too, are ready for CHANGE" The Register-Guard Eugene, Oregon:

"For most of the last century, no single group was a bigger obstacle to universal health care than organized medicine. Today, perhaps no single group stands more united in support of some form of universal coverage.

"Before their lost battle against President Lyndon Johnson and Medicare, the opposition of major medical organizations and individual physicians guaranteed doom for various state and presidential efforts to establish either a national health plan or other means to achieve universal health insurance.

"Now, surveys reveal that overwhelming numbers of physicians resent the current crazy patchwork health care system, which fixes their reimbursements, regulates and too often denies patient care, and piles physicians with paperwork so unending and from so many directions that the average doctor has little time left over to challenge the status quo.

"Add to all this the frustration arising from working for no pay to coordinate care and provide care after hours, from struggling with the cost of health care insurance for their own employees, and from seeing their uninsured and underinsured patients go without recommended care, and what emerges is widespread physician support of radical reform.

"More than four-fifths of physicians now agree that our health care system either needs fundamental changes or should be rebuilt completely."

Keep reading, this is a nice summary of where the specialty societies are coming down on health care reform, and it is encouraging...

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