New Generation of Activist Doctors is Fighting for Medicare for All

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https://time.com/5709017/medicare-for-all-doctor-activists/?


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While Medicare for All remains deeply controversial among many Americans—and a nonstarter among most Republicans—physician-activists insist the tide is beginning to turn. “There’s been a sea change in the way we talk about health care reform,” says Dr. Adam Gaffney, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which supports single-payer health care. He notes that as a growing number of doctors advocate for Medicare for All, the policy stands a better chance than it has in a generation. “Whatever reform we achieve,” he says, “we need them—us—to be a part of it and make it work.”

For most of the 20th century, physicians were a staunchly Republican group. Overwhelmingly white and male well into the 1990s, many ran their own practices and operated as small-business owners. Their leading trade group, the American Medical Association, reflected their members’ politics: it helped sink attempts by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to pass universal health care, hiring a public relations firm and employing doctors themselves to warn patients against national insurance. As Medicare gained steam in the 1960s, the group produced a record featuring Ronald Reagan, then an actor, to raise the specter of creeping socialism as part of its pitched, if losing, battle against the safety net for older Americans.
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[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Interesting.

I'm old enough to recall when the original Medicare was introduced, and the despicable ads by the AMA saying that Medicare was an abomination and would be the end to good medical care as we knew it.

Yeah, right. It's awful that old people aren't even more impoverished by medical costs than they already are.

I do think that with all this Medicare For All and other schemes that are being proposed, we ought to be taking a careful look at how other countries manage. Nowhere is all medical care totally for free. There are costs. Different countries deal with those costs in different ways. And we need to take a close look at how they are dealt with.

My personal take is that some sort of rock bottom basic health care needs to be free. This should include things like a yearly check-up, vaccinations where indicated (because these are very different depending on your age) and a few other things. Costs of surgery, knee or hip replacement, chemotherapy, appendectomies, and various other such things need to be taken into account. Maybe there should be a copay. Maybe some things need to be thought of as discretionary and should be charged more.

I do not hold myself up as an expert, but I do understand that there are lots of details, lots of ramifications that need to be considered.

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2. So many other countries have some form of a national program, and

Japan has had its program since 1938.

The people of those countries are not clamoring to end the program. The programs have not bankrupted the countries.

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3. Night time kick