Temperatures Rise Over Costs Of Care | Worcester Business Journal: Higher Sentiment For ‘Single Payer’?
Presumably, doctors are more familiar than the general public with the pressures driving up health care costs, and an overwhelming majority of them also say there needs to be some government involvement in the health care system. A survey by the Massachusetts Medical Society this fall found that 41 percent of doctors thought the best option for health care reform in the U.S. would be to adopt a single-payer system like Canada’s. That number was up from 34 percent in 2010.Pretty remarkable, especially when you look at the numbers in the graph. 41% plus 23% for 64% favoring either single payer or a 'public option' added to the current mix. 17% OK with the PPACA as it is, and another 15% seeming to favor high deductible plans.
Another 23 percent favor a mix of public and private plans, while 17 percent support reforms along the lines of the 2010 national health care reform act, including an individual mandate like Massachusetts’. Fifteen percent favor a system in which insurers can sell limited-benefit and high-deductible policies and the government gives subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance.
Lynda Young, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) and a Worcester pediatrician, said doctors who favor a single-payer system may see it as a way to avoid administrative burdens. She noted that a recent article in the policy journal Health Affairs found that Canadian doctors spend two or three hours a week on administration, compared with about 10 to 15 hours for doctors in the U.S.
- Sent using Google Toolbar Sphere: Related Content
1 comment:
Maybe it is time for major changes to the medical education system?
Is there some mental and/or bureaucratic construct that keeps us stuck? Like the Johari Window, is there a blind spot in our thinking that keeps us stuck?
What if we went back to an apprentice system (albeit modified). Open the doors of medical school up to many more students. With vast improvements to simulation technology there should be no reason we could not train a lot of students intensely over a shorter period of time all as primary care providers for much less money.
These providers graduate to work for 60-80K under the mentorship of a group of five highly trained and experienced Primary Care Providers/Mentors. The group of physician/mentors would split their week. A third of the week sitting in a room discussing cases and help with these provider graduates (who are seeing the majority of the patients), a third of the week seeing more complex patients themselves and a third of the week engaged in research or overseeing research. The provider graduates would take rotating first call at night and on weekends with mentors providing rotating back up call.
Additionally, if 5 physician/mentors were used then each physician/mentor (or Attending) could take an entire week off quarterly in addition to a full month off yearly. I think this would raise moral amongst Primary Care Physician's tremendously. The variety (teaching/practicing/research) would keep them fresh and extend their total years of service.
Honestly, are Residents getting the attention they need now from Attendings who are pressed on every side to bring in research dollars and wear several hats? My experience is that even the current residents are not always getting what they need. Even seasoned surgeons have felt the need for continued coaching and mentoring as covered in the recent NPR story http://www.npr.org/2011/09/27/140849085/pro-athletes-have-coaches-why-not-everyone-else?sc=ipad&f=1008
This was a concept championed by the late Eugene A. Stead, Jr. MD who served as the Chairman of Medicine at Duke University from 1947-1967 and prior to that Chairman of Medicine at Emory. His residency was at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. His vision was to free up the physician researcher to make the discoveries that would bring about lasting positive change in medicine instead of them simply serving full-time on the wards, non-stop. He helped to form the famed North Carolina State University, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill research triangle with this concept. Many consider him to be a brilliant educator with several students going on to Chairmanships as well. See "A Doctor's Doctor" by John Laslo, MD & Franicis A. Neelon, MD or see "A Way of Thinking: A Primer on the Art of Being a Doctor by Eugene Stead, Jr. MD & Barton f. Haynes, MD.
These Primary Care Graduates would go on to advance through a series of accomplishments including testing and application after 2-4 years of service in Primary Care. They would apply to competitive residency/apprenticeships in the medical specialties or they could advance to be physician/mentors.
This would place the majority of providers in Primary Care.
This poor Georgia boy had a vision for health care. He was not an ignorant or unprincipled man wanting to make money for HMO's and Insurance Companies. He had a larger vision. Sadly, most do not even now what his vision was.
If you can't tell I am a mid-level provider and I actually feel that the medical school system should become THE institution to educate all who diagnosis and prescribe.
If the physicians don't lead then others will and this is currently happening, see the New York Times article titled, "When the Nurse want to be called Doctor".
We are waiting for you to lead.
Now is the time for creativity.
Post a Comment