Obama Faces Tough Audience at American Medical Association, Health Care Focus
Obama gave an interesting and for the most part well received speech to the AMA yesterday. In his speech he discusses the need for a public option, a proposal I support wholeheartedly. We have 46 million Americans without health insurance and I believe a public option is critical to the success of any health care reform.
I’ve seen the argument that there should be no public option because we need to let the free market compete. As far as I know that’s what we’ve been doing and it hasn’t worked well for those who have to purchase their own insurance. Even many who have insurance find that the deductible is so high they really can’t afford diagnostic tests and routine screenings. I have a $3500 deductible so really the insurance is mainly to keep me from losing my home in the event of a major illness.
When it comes to health care Americans spent 53 percent per capita more than the next highest country, Switzerland, and 140 percent above the median industrialized country.¹ It is often stated that the high cost of health care in the United States is the fault of malpractice suits but Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research found that isnt’ necessarily true. “The researchers compared the number of malpractice claims and awards in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom and found that while U.S. citizens sue more often, the actual settlements from all four countries were comparable.”²
What the Johns Hopkins research did find is that Americans are just plain charged more for health care goods and services for comparable outcomes in other countries. The health care industry is no more immune to greed than any other industry.
It’s way past time for have genuine health care reform in this country. There are of course lots of things to consider as we move toward health care reform but at the heart of the reform should be the goal to make health care insurance and care more affordable and accessible for all Americans.
It’s been a long, long time since a sitting president of the United States talked face-to-face with the American Medical Association. So it’s not surprising that the more than 500 AMA delegates, friends and relatives assembled here are focusing all their energies on President Barack Obama takes the podium Monday.
The president addresses health care before the American Medical Association.
Obama’s speech will end a 26-year long drought for presidential speeches at the AMA; Ronald Reagan addressed the delegates in 1983, the same year he proposed to freeze Medicare payments to physicians while his administration worked to cobble together a Medicare overhaul.
The freeze, and a short-lived Medicare option called part C, which covered catastrophic medical expenses, were widely considered to be flops. When President Barack Obama delivers a speech today in front of the AMA House of Delegates, it will be poignant occasion for the divisive doctors’ group for a number of reasons.
Transcript of speech HERE
June 16th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
we don’t have free market health care to the fullest. Free market would allow all individuals to get their health insurance directly like auto insurance (but with the tax credits and lowerer costs that employers get). You would get to pick and choose what you want and up to what level or choose not to get any at all. This would bring about more competition (if the gov’t stays out of it). Right now it is limited to what your employer chooses to pay and provide so if they only choose HMOs you’re screwed or you have to pay outragous amounts to try to get it singlely with an insurance company. P.S. there is a public option, it is called welfare.