Physicians' Group: What Dumping HMOs Would Save

May 13, 2009 (LPAC)—Physicians for a National Health Policy (PNHP) is one of the major groups mobilizing for dumping all HMOs except those "non-profit HMOs" formed by doctors' group practices, and enacting national single-payer health care. These doctors took part in rallies at the Senate today, and protests against the Baucus "comparative effectiveness" sessions to cut medical care earlier this week.  

PNHP reports they have done a study showing that "The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because ... private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans' health dollars." Private insurers/HMOs waste $350 billion a year in those Americans' payments for health care, says PNHP.  

Other major groups represented at the Senate Park rally, which was hit with pamphlets and leaflets by the LaRouche Youth Movement, were RNs from the California Nurses Association, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the United American Nurses, Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, New York State Nurses Association, and nurses represented by the Service Employees International Union.