September 2008
by Tenisha Mercer
More Doctors in the United States Want National Health Care Insurance
Support for a national health care program to tackle the nation’s health care problems is growing among the nation’s physicians.
Approximately 59% of doctors in the United States said they support government legislation to establish a national health care plan, according to a survey by the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research (CHPPR). This year only 32% of physicians opposed it, compared to a similar study in 2002 which found that 49% of physicians supported national health insurance and 40% opposed it.
The 2007 study of 2,200 physicians found that nearly every medical specialty supports a national health care program, with the exception of radiologists, anesthesiologists, and surgical subspecialists.
There are more than 800,000 doctors in the U.S, so a 10% increase in support for national health insurance is significant, said study authors Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, director of CHPPR, and Dr. Ronald T. Ackerman, associate director of CHPRP, in a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal.
"Many claim to speak for physicians and represent their views,” said Dr. Carroll. “We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support national health insurance."
"As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, copayments, and restrictions on patient care,” said Dr. Ackerman. “More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem."
With health care costs rising in the United States and a growing number of uninsured patients, interest in a national health care system has been growing. The United States relies on a patchwork of federal and state insurance programs, private insurance, and employer-sponsored plans for health coverage. Nearly 50 million people in the United States don’t have health care insurance.
CHPPR is a think tank that researches health care topics such as health care financing, health insurance, medical education and training, and legal issues as they relate to physicians.
Source: CHPPR
Even More Reasons for Employers to add Wellness Programs
Wellness programs provide more benefits to employers than just healthier employees. A study by Maritz Research found that employees who work for employers that offer wellness programs are:
- more satisfied with their jobs,
- more likely to remain with the company long term,
- and more likely to recommend their employer to a friend or family member as a job prospect.
The study also found other benefits of wellness programs. Employees who participated in wellness programs regularly at least once a week took less sick days compared to employees who didn’t participate at all and were less likely to take consecutive sick days.
Even infrequent participants of wellness programs saw benefits. Employees who participated in wellness programs as little as once a year had better work attendance than those who didn’t participate at all.
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Source: Maritz Research