Doctors' Group Opposes Public Insurance Plangraphics8.nytimes...
Doctors' Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan
Made popular 1442 days ago in Opinion
nytimes.com — As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.

The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors' group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America's largest physician organization.

While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be "provided through private markets, as they are currently." It is now reacting, for the first time, to specific legislative proposals being drafted by Congress.

In the presidential campaign last year and in a letter to Congress last week, Mr. Obama called for a new "public health insurance option," which he said would compete with private insurers and keep them honest.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Wednesday that she supported that goal. "A bill will not come out of the House without a public option," she said Wednesday on MSNBC.

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Posted by Julia
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Do you support or oppose a public health insurance plan?
Support
71%
Oppose
27%
Not Sure
2.7%
This is not a scientific survey, click here to learn more. Results may not total 100% due to rounding and voting descrepencies.
User Comments
rakey1764
Posted 1442 days ago
0 up votes, 0 down votes
Every country that this system has been used in is a disaster, and proves it does not work well! Of course why should we expect BO and his administration to do anything that is good for this country and beneficial. They haven't proven to want what is best for this country yet, so why start now!!!
LiberalSC
Posted 1442 days ago
0 up votes, 0 down votes
The physicians themselves seem to support it regardless of what the AMA is saying:
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#rationing

Want to know how someone under "socialized medicine"-you know, where it is a "disaster"- really feels? Read his report:
http://www.truthout.org/112108A
LiberalSC
Posted 1442 days ago
0 up votes, 0 down votes
Dear AMA: I Quit. (by Dr. Chris McCoy)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-chris-mccoy/dear-ama-i-quit_b_214318.html
snippet:
when health care reform has been necessary, the AMA has always stood on the wrong side of history. The AMA opposed the creation of Medicare in the 1930s, when it was first proposed as part of Social Security. The AMA opposed Medicare again in the 1960s, going as far as to hire an actor named Ronald Reagan to read a script to the AMA Auxiliary declaring Medicare as the first step toward socialism, and concluding with the statement that if Medicare were to become law, "One day, we will awake to find that we have socialism.... One of these days, you and I will to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it was once like in America when men were free."

That was 50 years ago ... and none of that has come to pass.
MyObamaBiden
Posted 1430 days ago
0 up votes, 0 down votes
TOOO FUCKING BAD. NEITHER DID THE GOP IN POWER.

DEMS 4 LIFE
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