Business First of Buffalo 10:43 AM EST Monday, March 5, 2007
The New York State Academy of Family Physicians has called on Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the state Legislature to create a single payer health-care system.
Family physicians from across the state gathered in Albany Monday to lobby lawmakers. Their concerns include the fact that nearly 3 million New Yorkers are uninsured and many more are underinsured, while others have insurance that does not cover significant items like medications.
Rising costs have a growing number of employers either dropping or reducing coverage. The doctors also complain that dealing with multiple insurance plans, with their different rules, forms, and procedures, wastes an estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the health care dollar.
The Academy, which represents about 3,000 family doctors and more than 700 medical students, would like have all payments funneled through a single payer, eliminating multiple rules and procedures, enrollment and eligibility problems.
"A single payer health plan is the best way to control costs and reduce administrative waste and thereby insure long-term survival of universal, affordable coverage," said Dr. Linda Prine, chair of the Academy's Commission on Public Health.
"In Albany, the attempts at expanding coverage and cost control, though laudable, only tinker with the current system. The weakness we all witness with tinkering is that New York has achieved neither universal coverage nor effective cost control. Instead, we are bankrupting ourselves, making small dents only in adding broader coverage, and implementing even more administrative procedures. Moving to universal coverage is a big step. The current system is not working; we should not take a failed system and make it a bigger failure."
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