Some thoughts – and a call for comments – on health-care policy from Dr. Marc Siegel, FOX News’s Medical Contributor and a practicing physician.
The more I hear from politicians, academics, and insurance company representatives about the need to reform health care, the more I wonder what actual patients and their doctors think.
Actually, I don’t wonder, I think I know.
I take care of patients on a day-to-day basis and I interact with practicing doctors rather than bureaucrats. And I can tell you, there are a lot of disgruntled folks out there who don’t believe that President Obama has the miracle cure to our health-care problems.
Doctors are already fed up with insurances, public and private, and are leaving it by droves. Patients are already sick of long waiting lines in doctors’ offices, and of defensive interventional care administered by rushed paper-pushers who are afraid of lawsuits.
Primary-care doctors don’t believe that national health insurance will give them more time to see their patients with less paperwork and higher reimbursements or more control — in fact, they believe just the opposite, which is why only 2% of medical-school graduates choose primary care as a profession. Surgeons are already complaining that after long years of training to a high skill level, their reimbursements for long operations are being cut.
So why don’t we doctors organize and fight the changes, when all they will do is flood us with more patients we don’t have the time or resources to take care of properly?
One answer is that few of us believe that the American Medical Association can properly represent our concerns. A second answer is that we are too busy to band together. A third reason is that too many of us are afraid to stand up, for fear of being signaled out.
But that’s just my opinion.
What is your opinion?
Doctors out there, patients out there, speak up and tell us what your worries are about the sweeping changes in health insurance that President Obama is trying to make a reality.
Write back to us here with your opinions and insights. There is still time for doctors to fight back before we are swept under the bus.
Marc Siegel, MD
Fox News Medical Contributor