Healthcare Reform

There has been lots of talk lately by the President about health care reform. This was a widely debated topic during the most recent election. It seems as if the only thing everyone agreed on was we do need a better system that will provide coverage for the roughly 46 million Americans who do not have insurance, in spite of the $2.4 trillion spent on health care in 2007.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent writes a good article entitled, What you need to know about health care reform
How to do this and at what cost continues to be debated. Of course the Democrats and the Republicans disagree, but what else is new. Other than the Americans who do not have health care the group of people that will potentially be most impacted are physicians. It is still early but I think it is clear there will be general disagreement by this group. For example, AMA President Dr. Nancy Nielsen is quoted in the article and does not feel the President’s proposal is the answer, yet the American Academy of Family Physicians endorses the President’s plan.

I personally think physicians are going to be put in a very difficult position. If they don’t endorse the plan because they don’t believe it is economically viable then they will be portrayed as selfish and greedy. What the general public doesn’t likely understand is that the average physician practice has at least 35% (I am being very conservative with my estimate) of their practice is already government subsidized by Medicare and Medicaid, which reimburses much less than private insurance plans.

Bob Collins
The Medicus Firm
http://themedicusfirm.com/