New ideas to cover the uninsured
This was passed on to me from the ISMA (Indiana State Medical Association). Although this organization acts as if they want input, it seems strange that no physicians in Southern Indiana knew about this. They are reportedly using the same consulting firm that the State of Mass. used to develop their newest program to help solve the uninsured problems.
Physicians are certainly not opposed to helping solve the uninsured problem, but expanding the already broken Medicaid system to include everyone up to the 300% of poverty level is definately not the answer. If they cannot fix the Medicaid system, there will not be doctors for these patients to see.
Forecast for FLOYDS KNOBS, IN (on a scale of 1-12):
Today's allergy levels:
Wednesday - 10.6/High
Today's predominant pollen:
Oak, Maple and Ash.
posted by Anonymous at 6:20 AM
2 Comments:
I have two comments - one you stated that this was passed on to you by the ISMA but no doctors in southern indiana knew about it. Is there a serious communication gap? It's my understanding that Kevin Burke - who practices right over in Jeffersonville - is the current president. How effective is the ISMA in the opinion of physicians generally? Just curious.
Also, I want to address the comment you made about the medicaid program and how there may be no physicians to treat the patients, etc. As you may or may not know, my husband is from Holland. He has lived here many years, however, he receives multiple publications and corresponds regularly with family over there and so he (and I) keep up with current events there as well as here. Something I read in "the Windmill" - a dutch newspaper - states how a study shows that the physicians who practice over there are among the highest paid in the world. I don't understand how this seems to work in their environment of socialized medicine. Whenever I hear anything about socialized healthcare here in the states, I always see derogatory comments about Canada - but really don't hear about systems elsewhere.
The article I read also stated that Holland spends 8% of its GNP on healthcare and the United States spends 15%. Personally, I feel that we are already headed to socialized medicine in that the majority of the people I know or the patients I have taken care of who actually have health insurance are getting Medicaid or Medicare and these are both government programs. What is your take on this? I would like to see some dialogue out there from physicians about a national health care system in this country - a true dialogue that measures the pros and the cons.
By the way, good job on organizing the meeting with our representatives. It's just sad that there weren't more docs in attendance.
The ISMA received notification regarding the meeting in Madison 4 days prior to the meeting. In an attempt to get ISMA members and other physicians to the meeting on such short notice, the ISMA attemted to contact physician leaders in the area. Even on short notice, 2 local MD's were able to attend the meeting. About 15 people attended the meeting.
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