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In case any Seabrookers haven't noticed American Medicine is changing more rapidly now as we end this century than it has during the entire century. There are just two ( and I am sure you can note many more) recent highly publicized issues that remind those of us in medicine and those who depend on it to stay healthy and to recover when ill or injured. The first was the astonishing announcement which I first learned of reading the June 24, Post and Courier while down at Seabrook. The headline was AMA votes to unionize. The second tell tale sign of things gone awry in medicine is the senate's passage the week ending July 17 of a Patients Bill of Rights.
Why?
The short answer is managed care and the longer and more difficult one is the complicated way that health care is financed and the costs to the country of this care. We cannot explore either of these in the depth required to understand them: suffice it to say that managed care is a method to control health-care costs administered for the most part by insurance groups called euphemistically enough "Health Maintenance Organizations" (HMOs) which has resulted in unhappy patients, unhappy hospitals and unhappy doctors. In short it is a solution that has failed and everyone knows it, but nobody knows what to do about it.
Thus
In what I would term a desperate measure the American Medical Association has gone on record as supportive of some (not all) physicians forming a union. Just a year or so ago the last thing that would ever pass the staunchly conservative AMA would be the idea of unionizing physicians. It is a repugnant idea to the majority of fiercely independent physicians. The Republican congress which also has a conservative streak in it and values non-governmental interference whenever possible has never wanted to get into the healthcare delivery business, leaving it to business, but, now they are actually passing legislation which will begin to change managed care and HMOs. These are indeed unusual times and must be just a little threatening to Seabrookers and others who are looking at a time when the reliance on healthcare is almost a certainty to stay fit and healthy.
Personal OpinionI suppose from time to time it is permissible to voice some opinions to those who read this column. I am opposed to any physician unions. I am for Patients Bills of Rights. It is my fondest hope that these events, coming as they do within a month of each other, will be seen as a symptom that there is something very wrong in healthcare delivery. These two events should get the attention of the public and their servants, the politicians, so that serious work with physicians and hospital directors and the insurance industry can be undertaken to evaluate the entire healthcare industry in this country. We have great medicine in this country: it is the best in the world. It is expensive and will remain expensive. We have wonderful hospitals and we have fine physicians. What we need is a new way of thinking about a method for this to be preserved, while continuing to serve the people of this country who must never live in fear of whether care will be available.  Back to Top
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