Times Union Op-Ed by leader of our PNHP chapter
Expanding Medicare will help
Published in the Albany Times Union on Thursday, December 22, 2005
By Alan D. Miller, MD
I have been a physician for 60 years. The changes during that time in our ability to help patients are astonishing.
We have in this country well-trained physicians working in well-equipped facilities, capable of diagnosing and treating illnesses in a manner that a medical school graduate in 1945 would have found miraculous.
Yet I have never known greater discontent among physicians and patients. Physicians are beleaguered by paperwork and insufficient time to spend with their patients, who in turn find their care to be uncoordinated and impersonal.
Insurance to pay for our health care is becoming more and more expensive, and a serious burden to individuals and those who employ them. More than 45 million of us have no health insurance. That number is increasing daily.
Physicians still enjoy a respected and unique position in our society. Only we may practice medicine. Therefore, we must find a way to be available to everybody.
We carry a dual responsibility: to each patient and to all patients. These, not profit-making, are the determining purposes in our work.
How can we preserve creativeness, flexibility and concern for individuals while eliminating the rigidities, inequalities and capriciousness of the system of multiple, competing, profit-driven health insurance companies?
Remarkably, we have a model at hand: Medicare. It may have its imperfections, but they are open to view and correctable. Its administrative costs are less than 5 percent, compared to the 20 percent to 25 percent that characterize the private health insurance industry. And see what it has accomplished: Very few of the 45 million uninsured are older than 65.
That is why more and more of us, including physicians, employers, elected officials and, above all, patients, are working toward expanding a program like Medicare to our entire population.
This will not solve all of our problems in providing the best possible health care to everyone, but it would be a major, and indispensable, first step. We could provide more care, to all of us, at substantially less cost.
This is one major goal on which all of us agree. It is a necessary and good idea whose time has come.
Dr. Alan D. Miller of Delmar is vice chairman of the Capital Region branch of Physicians for a National Health Program. He was commissioner of the state Department of Mental Hygiene from 1966 to 1975 and associate dean of Albany Medical College from 1975 to 1988.
Published in the Albany Times Union on Thursday, December 22, 2005
By Alan D. Miller, MD
I have been a physician for 60 years. The changes during that time in our ability to help patients are astonishing.
We have in this country well-trained physicians working in well-equipped facilities, capable of diagnosing and treating illnesses in a manner that a medical school graduate in 1945 would have found miraculous.
Yet I have never known greater discontent among physicians and patients. Physicians are beleaguered by paperwork and insufficient time to spend with their patients, who in turn find their care to be uncoordinated and impersonal.
Insurance to pay for our health care is becoming more and more expensive, and a serious burden to individuals and those who employ them. More than 45 million of us have no health insurance. That number is increasing daily.
Physicians still enjoy a respected and unique position in our society. Only we may practice medicine. Therefore, we must find a way to be available to everybody.
We carry a dual responsibility: to each patient and to all patients. These, not profit-making, are the determining purposes in our work.
How can we preserve creativeness, flexibility and concern for individuals while eliminating the rigidities, inequalities and capriciousness of the system of multiple, competing, profit-driven health insurance companies?
Remarkably, we have a model at hand: Medicare. It may have its imperfections, but they are open to view and correctable. Its administrative costs are less than 5 percent, compared to the 20 percent to 25 percent that characterize the private health insurance industry. And see what it has accomplished: Very few of the 45 million uninsured are older than 65.
That is why more and more of us, including physicians, employers, elected officials and, above all, patients, are working toward expanding a program like Medicare to our entire population.
This will not solve all of our problems in providing the best possible health care to everyone, but it would be a major, and indispensable, first step. We could provide more care, to all of us, at substantially less cost.
This is one major goal on which all of us agree. It is a necessary and good idea whose time has come.
Dr. Alan D. Miller of Delmar is vice chairman of the Capital Region branch of Physicians for a National Health Program. He was commissioner of the state Department of Mental Hygiene from 1966 to 1975 and associate dean of Albany Medical College from 1975 to 1988.
posted by Andy at Saturday, December 24, 2005
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