Doctors Prescribe Health Care Reform

Your friendly neighborhood physician, well many of them anyway, endorse the need for health care reform. While this same group was on the other side last time, having opposed health care reform efforts, today they back the proposal. Like any astute politician, they have seen the light and if they have to change “parties” that is just the price you gotta pay. Doctor groups are now realizing that something has to change, because the current momentum is carrying the health care system towards the precipice of doom. Cost are rising faster than probably any other economic indicator; except the cost of saving the Financial markets and institutions, and the Stimulus package for the rest of us.

Makes you wonder what symptoms the good doctors detected that lead them to the diagnosis that the patient was terminal. Do you think their concern was the patient was slowly bleeding funds and could not survive if this rate continued, or worse if the rate the funds flowed keep increasing. Or despite their ethical concerns and dedication to their patients’ welfare, might there have been the recognition that they were facing their own lethal cardiac attack – the sudden and rapid cessation of clients that can actually pay their medical bills. Well, it probably doesn’t matter why they have reached to right decision. After all, when doctors know what to treat you for, your survival rate improves considerably. Of course having the right diagnosis doesn’t always mean that they have a treatment or the right treatment. None of us would be happy if the treatment was successful, too bad the patient died.

Stepping back, the doctors’ support does provide an important data point. Whether they are advocating the Hippocratically appropriate position or the self-interest “Gordon Gekko”-ish capitalist view; they are telling us that the current system is harmful to us, to our society, and to our country. The system is sick, it needs to be treated, and hopefully restored to a healthy state.
Now while I appreciate the doctors’ support, I don’t look to them to necessarily know what the cure is. I know that they will work with the politicians, particularly via their lobbyist groups; but I think that they have not demonstrated the skills, knowledge nor vision to believe that they know how to remedy the problems that I believe they have in some cases helped create.

Therefore, we need to consider and understand the role and needs of the physicians in the Health Care Reform effort; but what is most essential is that we create a system that will:
· drive the costs of service to competitive low-cost and profitable levels
· insure that medical services provided are of the highest quality that is consistent with affordable practices
· prevent abuse and inefficiencies for the patients, the doctors, and the industry in general
· stimulate advances in treatments and policies
· avoid the creation of a bureaucracy that is more focused on its own continuity than in the stated goals for with it was created.

In closing, I would say that I don’t think we can expect to have Health Care Reform achieved by depending upon the proscription: “Physician, heal thyself.”