The American College of Physicians, which represents 159,000 internists in the U.S., has endorsed a single-payer American healthcare system. Medicare for all is at the center of the American healthcare debate as a handful of Democratic presidential candidates have adopted it as part of their platforms.
The association published a paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine and an open letter signed by 2,000 physicians prescribing a Medicare-for-all system. The letter was published in The New York Times as a full-page ad by the group on Jan. 21, 2020. The Health and Public Policy Committee of the ACP reviewed studies, reports and surveys on healthcare coverage to come up with their position and outline a call to action and vision statements in the paper.
ACP found current healthcare spending is high and unsustainable, with too many Americans uninsured or underinsured. The nation also pays more for hospital services, prescription drugs and on administration costs every year, yet sees unfavorable health outcomes compared to other countries.
“High U.S. health care spending has generally not yielded gains in health or productivity,” the paper reads.
Furthermore, healthcare is mostly unaffordable for Americans.
To combat these systemic failures, a single payer system was proposed by the association that achieves universal coverage with essential benefits and lower administrative costs.
Two physicians from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)–– David U. Himmelstein, MD, professor at CUNY's Hunter College and lecturer in Medicine at Harvard, and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, professor of public health and health policy in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and adjunct clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine––also penned an editorial alongside the paper calling for single-payer healthcare reform and comparing the success of Canada’s single-payer system to the healthcare failures in the U.S.
“As physicians, we see daily the harm that our fragmented, private-insurance based system does to our patients,” Adam Gaffney, president of PNHP and a pulmonary and critical care physician at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, said in a press release. “Patients go without the care they need, and physicians squander time and resources on wasteful billing and clerical tasks. Medicare for All would be a much better way—for patients and doctors both.”
The two also recently published a study that found administration costs in the U.S. healthcare system cost a whopping $812 billion––four times higher than in Canada. The pair also advocated for Medicare for all in that study, and Himmelstein has served as an unpaid policy advisor for presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and written research manuscripts for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), also a Democratic presidential candidate.
“When we started PNHP, doctors who supported single-payer reform were considered radicals, and reporters likened us to 'furriers for animal rights'. Now we're squarely in the mainstream of the medical profession,” Woolhandler said in the press release. “More and more doctors have realized – often from talking to our Canadian colleagues––that single payer is the only way to cut insurers’ paperwork and profits that siphon hundreds of billions annually from care in the U.S.”
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."