Many Doctors Support National Insurance

Nov. 17, 2003 -- Nearly half of American doctors say they support government action to establish national health insurance, a factor that may be crucial to future efforts to reform the current health care system.

Researchers found that 49% of doctors in a national survey said they support governmental legislation to establish national health insurance and 40% are opposed to the idea.

But only about one quarter of doctors endorsed the idea of a "single-payer" approach to national health insurance with the federal government footing the bill for all health care, and 60% opposed this approach.

More than 40 million Americans lack health insurance, and researchers say many believe creating a national health insurance system would remedy this situation. But many also believe that opposition by major medical organizations and lack of physician support are behind the failure of efforts to establish such a system.

Most Docs Support National Health Insurance

Researchers say previous physician surveys have found mixed attitudes about national health insurance and were often limited by poor response rates or involved only a particular group of physicians.

In this study, which appears in the Nov. 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers polled 1,650 randomly sampled doctors from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile.

Researchers found that doctors were most likely to support national health insurance if they worked in inner cities or nonprofit settings and if at least 20% of their patients were on Medicaid.

Those physician specialties with the highest levels of support for national health insurance were internal medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatrists. Family medicine doctors, anesthesiologists, and specialty surgeons expressed the lowest degree of support for such a system.

In an editorial that accompanies the study, Arthur L. Kellerman, MD, MPH, of Emory University in Atlanta, says the study shows a plurality of doctors support national health insurance but far fewer want the federal government to be the sole payer for health care.

"Whether this support is sufficient to mount a successful effort to cover the uninsured will depend in large part on whether the status quo remains 'everyone's second choice,'" writes Kellerman.