The problem now is that we have pushed the level of cost containment by sacrificing 42 million Americans without health insurance and asking for unacceptable choices in maintaining quality of care. These areas have forced intense public scrutiny in how we finance health care and yet, we have not had a serious debate on how we should finance health care for this nation. Frankly, neither a physician union or provider directed group will survive in this environment when the basic premise that health care is a privilege and sold to the lowest bidder prevails. Physicians have expended so much past energy in fighting national health insurance that they have fallen victim to a system far more bureaucratic and unforgiving than they could have ever imagined. Unions, or for that matter, provider organizations, do not survive well in an environment where there are plenty of foot soldiers to fill in the ranks.
Physicians get smart.
Fight for access to care and a properly financed national health insurance plan. Nothing guarantees better employment for physicians than 42 million newly reenfranchised citizens who have been excluded by an unfair system. And nothing that we as a nation can do that would be fairer and better than to create an equitable health care system where we stop treating it like a commodity rather than as a public good. Inc. All rights reserved.