Health Care Reform--Polling doctors

The New England Journal of Medicine has posted the results of a health care reform poll focusing on doctors' opinions: "Doctors on Coverage — Physicians’ Views on a New Public Insurance Option and Medicare Expansion". The initial poll was sent to a random sample of 5,157 U.S. doctors (some excluded from the original list of 6,000 because of their being in training or their practicing medicine outside U.S. territories). The doctors were divided into four groups:

• primary care physicians,
• medical subspecialists, neurologists, and psychiatrists
• surgical specialists and subspecialists, and
• other specialties

The physicians were asked which of three options for expanding health care they preferred:

• "public and private options, providing people younger than 65 years of age the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan (like Medicare) or in private plans;
• private options only, providing people with tax credits or subsidies, if they have low income, to buy private insurance coverage, without creating a new public plan.
• or a public option only, eliminating private insurance and covering everyone through a single public plan like Medicare."

Of the total number of doctors polled, 43.2% of doctors responded:

• 62.9% supported the public and private option
• 27.3% supported offering private options only
• 9.6% supported offering only a public option.

Interestingly, of the four categories of physicians, primary care doctors most supported the public and private option. Also,

Overall, 58.3% of respondents supported an expansion of Medicare to Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 years. This support was consistent across all four specialty groups, with proportions in favor ranging from 55.6% to 62.4%.

So, as in the wider American public, a majority of doctors favor expanding insurance coverage by providing access through both public and private options. Just saying.

Go to the article (link above) for graphs and such. For further discussion of this poll and others, go to "Listen to Your Doctors," by Harold Pollack, posted at The New Republic, 15 September 2009.