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With health care spending skyrocketing, doctors expressing growing dissatisfaction, and roughly 48 million Americans uninsured, presidential politics is prompting considerable discussion about health care reform. But how do physicians feel about some of the possible “fixes” for U.S. health care?
Among 3,116 responses to a physician survey conducted earlier this year by LocumTenens.com, only 16 percent of providers thought universal health care would affect their incomes positively. While 42 percent of respondents predicted no effect on physician salaries from universal health care, another 42 percent predicted a negative effect.
“In an earlier survey on the election and health care reform, physicians were fairly evenly divided as to the ‘solution’ for improving our health care system,” LocumTenens.com Senior Vice President Pamela McKemie said. “Twenty-seven percent said it was universal health care with multi-payer reimbursement, twenty-three percent said it was universal health care with single-payer reimbursement, and twenty-five percent selected ‘tax credits to allow more people to afford healthcare.’ ”
McKemie noted that only five percent of respondents to the earlier survey wanted to “leave the current system in place,” while 12 percent offered an “other” answer.
Physicians’ open-ended comments related to universal health care’s effect on their incomes offered a mix of perspectives:
- “It would be a boon. Everyone would have equal access and my practice would not be hamstrung by providing only what a particular insurance will pay for rather than what the patient actually needs.”
- “Severe limitations to delivery of sufficient care leading to increased cost of private insurance and preferential treatment toward the upper income earners who can afford it.”
- “Universal healthcare would reduce my income in the short term. But the longer term effect would be good, since the current system isn't sustainable.”
- “Universal health care would be financed in part by reducing reimbursement to physicians and other medical providers.”
- “It would benefit my practice. It is unconscionable that there are 40 million uninsured people in this country.”
Forty percent identified themselves as employer-based, while 28 percent said they were in private practice. Only 18 percent of respondents declared their employment status as “locum tenens or independent contractor exclusively,” but 26 percent said they had worked as a locum tenens provider.
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