Damn Socialist Doctors!

Apparently, close to 60% of all medical doctors are capitalist-hating, pinko commies! Reuters is reporting (Doctors support universal health care: survey) that close to 60% of all doctors favor a nationalized health insurance system. In fact, the statistics are very strong across the board, including “83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.”

“As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care,” said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. “More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem.”

We often hear the myths of nationalized programs in other countries, Canada for instance, but we never seem to hear the critiques of our system, like the 47 million uninsured or the countless more who are under-insured and don’t even realize it (you may be one). We also don’t hear about the massive restrictions on care that most insurers impose, like which doctor you can use or which procedures are allowed. Most young people miss this point because they haven’t asked much of the “system” yet. We also never seem to hear the horror stories about those who are in fact covered and when it comes time for these for-profit companies to pay up, they delay, harass or just deny legitimate claims. I can personally testify to these facts after seeing my Aunt go through being denied coverage when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After being a long-term customer and paying premiums on-time, every time, Cigna, “A Business of Caring” dropped her as a customer when it came time for them to pay up. She not only had to fight breast cancer, she had to fight her own insurance company! In what kind of sick system does a company regularly and systematically work against their very own customers? Trust me, these companies don’t work for you.

Another thing you never seem to hear about is how much money you’re not earning because the portion of your salary that you’d otherwise receive is going to very large insurance companies (who are making record profits, by the way) in the form of your employers’ health insurance contributions on your behalf. As someone who pays their own health insurance, I’m not talking about insignificant amounts of money. How would you like to make an extra $1,000-a-month more than you do now? That could be what your employer is paying to cover you. This also makes it increasingly difficult for America to compete in the world when health insurance is such a significant part of the goods and services we produce.

Oh, and for those of you apologizing for these major shortcomings by stating that our health care system is the most technologically sophisticated in the world, keep in mind that study after study bears out the fact that relative to other countries, technology and the sophistication of care has done absolutely nothing to improve the quality of our health. Even when the American diet and obesity are taken into account, Americans don’t live as long and aren’t as healthy as people in dozens of other countries around the world.

Finally, when you consider that we pay more money for our health insurance “system” (in fact many times more) than every country on the planet and these are the results, one has to wonder why more doctors and other Americans aren’t working towards a nationalized alternative?