Would single payer work? The real devil is in the details.

When I began my career as a physician in the late 1990s, I was relatively apolitical. Since then, as our health care system has crumbled, and as its demise (and our repeated failure to fix things) has increasingly affected my patients and my practice, I have become very political. In 2008, I began giving lectures in the community in support of a single-payer health reform model. My political leanings tend to land me in a largely single-payer crowd, and single-payer’s simplicity and non-profit ethics appeal to me. But since opening a small practice in 2009, my experiences and observations on the front lines of health care have made me question whether a single-payer system is necessarily the best way to organize our health care system. I believe quite strongly that every American needs affordable, high-quality health care. And I don’t necessarily care how we achieve that. A single-payer system, typically defined as a model where payment for health care is organized under one non-profit government insurance program (somewhat like our current Medicare system); where individuals pay a set annual fee (in the form of a tax) that covers all health care costs and everyone is covered and has access to comprehensive care, seems like a great idea, at least on paper. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Policy Health reform Source Type: blogs