Physicians for a National Health Programme and other groups in the U.S. advocate a single-payer health care system as a way to improve health care quality and access, and reduce the frustrations of managed care. However, critics argue that national health care would make matters worse.
American doctors complain they spend too little time with patients, however:
U.S. doctors complain that insurance paperwork reduces their ability to practice medicine but their frustration is nothing compared with the dissatisfaction in the British National Health Service, where a recent survey found eight out of 10 family doctors would quit the NHS if they could.
American physicians believe they’re expected to do more for less compensation, but doctors working for national health or single-payers systems make out much worse. On average, doctors in Canada and Germany earn about half what their U.S. counterparts do. In Austria, France and Britain it’s less than one-third, and in Finland, Norway and Sweden just one-fourth.
The quality of care also suffers under national health or single payer systems, due to rationing. One in five British physicians knows someone who has been harmed by delays in receiving treatment.
Source: Devon Herrick (NCPA research manager), Would National Health Insurance Benefit Physicians? NCPA Brief Analysis No. 370, August 31, 2001, National Center for Policy Analysis.
For text http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba370/ba370.html
For more on National Health Insurance http://www.ncpa.org/pi/health/hedex10a.html
FMF/11 September 2001
