Doctors' Support for Public Health Insurance Plan 'Broad and Widespread'

Doctors' Support for Public Health Insurance Plan 'Broad and Widespread' in Individual Health Insurance

A survey published Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine reports that a large majority of doctors believe there should be a public option. And large isn’t an exaggeration: A whopping 73% support the creation of a government-sponsored plan either alone or as choice alongside private health insurance.

“Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country,” says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, one of the studies researchers, “we found that physicians, regardless — whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived — the support for the public option was broad and widespread.”

The survey even found far-reaching support within members of the American Medical Association, a group that has yet to warm to the public option. The researchers said that a desire to uncover “the real voice of physicians” was one thing that motivated the study.  

We suspect that the public option’s popularity among doctors arises in part from their prior experience with government-run health care through Medicare, which the survey revealed they also thought of favorably.

Wow. So does that make the public option doctor’s orders? We’ll see. Amendments are still trickling through and congressional opinion seems, well, judging by Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner’s disagreement about public support for the plan, as contentious as ever. 

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