Nearly 8,000 doctors call for national health insurance

Associated Press ^ | Tuesday, August 12, 2003 | AP

[FreeLibertarian]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 8,000 U.S. physicians are calling for government-financed national health insurance, which they say would cover every American while saving billions of dollars.

Ten years after President Clinton's national health plan died in Congress, tangled in complexity and under fierce assault from the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the doctors argue that private sector solutions have failed.

[FreeLibertarian]

We may be in trouble.

[CWOJackson]

Anyone interested in national health care should visit Canada...and get sick or injured.

[Mfkmmof4]

I heard this discussed on the radio tonight and was amazed. The government would do this and the government would do that...but of course where does the money come from to pay all of this?? I know.....taxes!!

[Beck_isright]

Ship them all to France, Canada and Cuba. The hell with all of them.

[irishtenor]

I can save even more on administration cost... No insurance at all, no more than $20 a visit to the doctor, and hospital stays at less than $50 a day.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Nearly 8,000 doctors call for national health insurance,

Don't you mean 8,000 'useful idiots' call for national health insurance.

[tacticalogic]

I'll bet money, marbles and chalk you don't have to dig very deep to find the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation involved in this.

[woofie]

How many insurance salesmen want this?

[jwalsh07]

The Canadians have not secured rights to a new drug in over 40 years.

Any opinions on that miserable record?

[gaspar]

Look, what we have here is an average if 160 doctors per state. Hell, there are that many doctors in one large hospital in San Diego.

[CWOJackson]

My in-law winter in Mesa, Arizona. They used to have Canadian neighbors until the husband had a heart attack. The Canadian medical system basically insisted that the American hospital treating him get him stable enough to fly back to Canada on a normal passenger flight. He died several hours after getting back to Canada.

[Sgt_Schultze]

These idiot doctors think that once the government is paying for their procedures, their work schedules and fee schedules will remain at their own convenience. They don't forsee what will surely happen: longer hours, less patient selection discretion and lower reimbursements.

[Alberta's Child]

That 8,000 number will shrink to about 0 when they realize that the cost reductions in any government-paid system of medical care are primarily the result of government-imposed limits on doctors' fees.

[Stew Padasso]

You should hear my uncle rattle off about this issue. He is a big shot physician in Illinois. With full confidence he tells us that government run health care is "inevitable."

[vbmoneyspender]

I'll bet the Canadian relatives blamed the U.S. for not flying him back quick enough.

[annyokie]

No kidding. I have at least a dozen friends who are MDs. This article means nada.

[jammer]

You're right, it probably is inevitable, and we're in trouble. The sickening irony is that it may come about during a Republican administration. A year ago, would you have believed even a RINO would go for the Prescription program?

[Mike Darancette]

Nearly 8,000 U.S. physicians are calling for government-financed national health insurance, which they say would cover every American while saving billions of dollars.

- Are these 8,000 doctors willing to become Federal salaried employees?
- Are the trial lawyers willing to forego malpractice suits since you cannot sue the federal government?
- Is the American public willing to accept rationed care when it comes to themselves or a loved one?
- Is the American public willing to accept quality of life judgments made by a committee or a bureaucrat when it comes to themselves or a loved one?

If the answers are all yes then we might save money even though health care in America would be all the worse.

[SandRat]

The AP citing a story that 8,000 Doctors support this or that without saying what the total number of practicing Doctors there are out there in the US is meaningless.

In fact it could be potentially said that the AP may be obscuring the truth to push an AP Political Agenda.

For the 8,000 number to be signicificant it would have to represent more that 15% of the total number of Doctors and have come from a totally random sampling. Additionally, the questions would have to have been so constructed and restated in the survey in such a manner so as to eliminate confusion over the questions respondants being able to predetermine the overall outcome. (In otherwords not to FREEP the survey!)

This is all specified in the study and standard practice of Statistics and Ergonomics as they apply to statistics.

Me personnaly, I think the AP is lying and pushing an agenda from the political left.

[FreeLibertarian]

No. I never thought I would see the day.