Support for Medicare for All is growing significantly among doctors. Last week, tens of thousands of doctors belonging to the American College of Physicians (ACP) endorsed Medicare for All as a way to guarantee affordable health care to all Americans.
The ACP represents 159,000 doctors in the US. It is the largest doctors’ group other than the American Medical Association. You can read it’s position paper, “Envisioning a Better U.S. Health Care System for All: Coverage and Cost of Care” in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The ACP explicitly recognized that it is unacceptable that tens of millions of Americans have no health care coverage or have coverage that is inadequate to meet their needs. Health care costs are unsustainable. In addition, administrative hurdles in our current system take time from patient care and keep people from getting care.
The ACP calls for guaranteeing all Americans access to, and coverage for, all essential benefits, regardless of health, wealth, employment or place of residence. It supports both single-payer Medicare for All and a multi-payer system offering publicly financed coverage and regulated private insurance.
A multi-payer system would have much higher administrative costs and would be a lot more expensive. Unlike with Medicare for All, the multi-payer model would mean that hospitals and doctors would continue to spend billions of dollars on administrative costs rather than using that money to expand care. And, so long as private insurers are in business to maximize profits, they are likely to do what they can to impose obstacles to quality care for people with complex and costly conditions, as they often do today.
Here’s more from Just Care:
- Ten ways Medicare Advantage plans differ from traditional Medicare
- Four things to think about when choosing between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans
- Would a public option reduce your out-of-pocket health care costs?
- Congresswoman Jayapal introduces Medicare for All bill
- Medicare for All lowers taxes for most Americans
