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AMA to dissect public health plan
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TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: President Obama faces a skeptical audience today at the American Medical Association's annual meeting in Chicago. The president will talk up his idea of a public health insurance plan. As Tamara Keith reports, the influential AMA has so far been cool to that idea.
Tamara Keith: The American Medical Association represent 250,000 doctors -- people who have a quite a stake in the outcome of President Obama's health care reform push.
AMA President Dr. Nancy Neilsen says her organization doesn't think a public health insurance plan is the best option.
Nancy Neilsen: We haven't had exactly the most wonderful experience with government-run plans, but we are looking at all of the options that are on the table.
The AMA is the nation's largest physician organization, and has long influenced health policy debates.
Jonathan Oberlander is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:
Jonathan Oberlander: Part of their concern about the public plan I think is ideological and a resistance to the idea of public insurance. Part of it is financial -- you know, they worry that a public plan will control costs by holding down what doctors are paid. And so they're trying to represent the financial interest of physicians.
And that's just one of the competing interest in this debate.
In Washington, I'm Tamara Keith for Marketplace.
AMERICA’S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!
It’s official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. The first PANDEMIC in 41 years. And WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES will have to face this PANDEMIC with the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed World.
STAND READY AMERICA TO SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.
We spend over twice as much of our GDP on healthcare as any other country in the World. And Individual American spend about ten times as much out of pocket on healthcare as any other people in the World. All because of GREED! And the PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare system in America.
And while all this is going on, some members of congress seem mostly concern about how to protect the corporate PROFITS! of our GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT NATIONAL DISGRACE. A PRIVATE FOR PROFIT DISGRACE that is in fact, totally valueless to the public health. And a detriment to national security, public safety, and the public health.
Progressive democrats and others should stand firm in their demand for a robust public option for all Americans, with all of the minimum requirements progressive democrats demanded. If congress can not pass a robust public option with at least 51 votes and all robust minimum requirements, congress should immediately move to scrap healthcare reform and demand that President Obama declare a state of NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY! Seizing and replacing all PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance plans with the immediate implementation of National Healthcare for all Americans under the provisions of HR676 (A Single-payer National Healthcare Plan For All).
Coverage can begin immediately through our current medicare system. With immediate expansion through recruitment of displaced workers from the canceled private sector insurance industry. Funding can also begin immediately by substitution of payroll deductions for private insurance plans with payroll deductions for the national healthcare plan. This is what the vast majority of the American people want. And this is what all objective experts unanimously agree would be the best, and most cost effective for the American people and our economy.
In Mexico on average people who received medical care for A-H1N1 (Swine Flu) with in 3 days survived. People who did not receive medical care until 7 days or more died. This has been the same results in the US. But 50 million Americans don’t even have any healthcare coverage. And at least 200 million of you with insurance could not get in to see your private insurance plans doctors in 2 or 3 days, even if your life depended on it. WHICH IT DOES!
Contact congress and your representatives NOW! AND SPREAD THE WORD!
God Bless You
Jacksmith – WORKING CLASS
As a medical student who will graduate with approximately $250,000 of student loans from one of the nations top medical schools (and I am not alone), I am frightened that Obama will slash compensation for physicians without providing amnesty for our educational debt. I cannot survive on a reduced income and be forced to pay off such debt. He absolutely needs to acknowledge this before the AMA and AMSA will support him. In truth, most young doctors support single payer health care and lower wages provided we will not be mortgaging our futures to get there. Most physicians do not care if they are millionaires, but they do endure *at least* eight years of post-graduate training and deserve to be paid more than the average or median salary in the US.
If national health care is so bad, why did people elect by a landslide the liberal that was promising it? Must be a landslide of people who have no healthcare to lose. Perhaps insurance companies and the AMA should look inwards at themselves and figure out why they let people get so bad off that the people voted so much for socialism. The real national qustion is, what do we do with the ballooning number of those people for whom the value of their honest day's work falls below the cost of healing them when they are sick?
