Remember the old commercial for Trident gum, where they said that 4 out of 5 dentists recommended Trident for their patients who chew gum?
That ad may seem quaint, but there’s one very contemporary issue on which medical opinion is nearly as united today as Trident wanted us to believe it was 30 years ago about gum: the public option.
A new survey of America’s doctors by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that two out of three doctors recommend a public option for their patients who need quality, affordable health care:
A RWJF survey summarized in the September 14, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that 62.9 percent of physicians nationwide support proposals to expand health care coverage that include both public and private insurance options—where people under the age of 65 would have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan (like Medicare) or in private plans. The survey shows that just 27.3 percent of physicians support a new program that does not include a public option and instead provides subsidies for low-income people to purchase private insurance.
Not quite four out of five, but two-thirds is (if you’ll pardon the pun) nothing to sneeze at.
Given that doctors overwhelmingly want a public option, and patients (i.e. the rest of us) overwhelmingly support it as well, one can’t help but wonder: why are “moderates” on both sides of the aisle running away from it?
It’s almost as if, despite all the rhetoric from the right about how nobody should come between a patient and her doctor, there were some vast, impersonal industry making billions by standing between them — and willing to do whatever it takes to keep either doctors or patients from cutting them out.
But that’s just crazy talk! Everybody knows that in America there’s nobody standing between doctors and patients.
Right?