In the New England Journal of Medicine today, a fascinating poll survey done by doctors from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York via email and phone, shows doctors overwhelmingly comfortable with the public option. As noted by NPR:
When polled, "nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options," says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani. She and Dr. Alex Federman, both internists and researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.
Most doctors — 63 percent — say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That's the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.
Some graphics to go with the story, language in italics from NEJM:
Survey respondents were asked to indicate which of three options for expanding health insurance coverage they would most strongly support: public and private options, providing people younger than 65 years of age the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan (like Medicare) or in private plans; private options only, providing people with tax credits or subsidies, if they have low income, to buy private insurance coverage, without creating a new public plan; or a public option only, eliminating private insurance and covering everyone through a single public plan like Medicare.
Panel B shows the proportions of respondents (according to their medical specialty) who supported, opposed, or were undecided about the expansion of Medicare to include adults between the ages of 55 and 64 years. The proportion of support was consistent across all four specialty groups (P=0.08).
In interpreting this, one might think of "public option only" as single payer in Panel A, and expansion of Medicare in Panel B as "Medicare for all over 55". For single payer alone, support was smallest, but a combo with private payer as an option was much more popular with the docs. With all the doctor groups broken out by various specialty (primary care, surgeons, medical sub-specialty, other), "private options only" (using existing insurance with tax credits or subsidies) were more popular than "single payer only" with all groups, but the combo was always much more popular. And for the question in Panel B on expanding Medicare to 55-64, surgeons were no different than pediatricians in saying "good idea".
Interestingly, in looking at ways to expand coverage, doctors in the South was least in favor of public option only (6.3) and most in favor of private option only (34.6). The West's docs most favored the public option only (13.3), and the Northeast's docs least favored private option only (18.4).
This disclosure about the authors is from NPR, in noting that both AMA and non-AMA docs support the public option:
The survey even found widespread support for a public option among doctors who are members of the American Medical Association, a group that's opposed to it. The AMA fears a public option eventually could lead to government putting more limits on doctors' fees.
"The American Medical Association has traditionally been probably the loudest voice for physicians across the United States," says Federman. "And part of our reason for doing this research was really to get at the real voice of physicians as opposed to the voice of one physician organization."
Keyhani and Federman belong to another, smaller group, the National Physicians Alliance. It supports a public option, and Keyhani has spoken publicly about her own support for a public option.
The bottom line is that those (of us) who know the system (the doctors) and live it every day strongly favor a public option, especially when it's a choice for consumers rather than by itself. The article authors note this is consistent with public opinion as a whole (see coverage of ABC/WaPo poll, and arguably the docs have a better idea of what a public option is than the general public, which admits to confusion.)
As a point of fact, doctors can not be used as an excuse to avoid a public option.
See also more comment in this recommended diary by Helenann.