Senior Doctors Make The Case for National Health Care Reform and A Public Option

From PNHP

Fifty-nine members of the Harvard Medical School Class of 1959 are convinced that reform of the American health care system is essential, must be substantial and carefully designed, and must include a public health insurance option.

Each of the signers has 50 years of experience and leadership in clinical practice, medical education, administration, and/or research. Our collective careers cover a wide variety of primary care and specialty fields in a range of organizational settings, in both private practice and academia, across the United States.

Excluding a public option would throw away a vital opportunity to test different ways to provide quality care for all. A public plan would help develop and evaluate new standards of practice, malpractice reform, and reimbursement of physicians, and would emphasize preventive care. To be affordable, it would have to avoid financial incentives for unnecessary services and contain measures that curb financial abuse and waste by some hospitals and, unfortunately, by some of our medical colleagues.

A public option would also identify and encourage use of demonstrated best practices shown to be effective at less cost, offer greater access, and provide higher quality of care. Administrative overhead, as now in Medicare, would be significantly lower without for-profit intermediaries. These innovations could help lift the competitive burden that health care places on American employers in the global marketplace, while also offering portability and continuity of coverage during job changes and illness.

Common sense demands a planned, full comparison of the relative benefits of public vs. private options. At the outset, there must be clear and uniform ground rules for measuring, reporting, and evaluating cost, access, and quality of care for all plans.

We urge Congress and the President to take this courageous step at a vital time in our nation’s history.