Young Doctors Speak out on Health Care Reform

Monday Sept 21,2009 from Youth Radio[YR] (global public radio) one of their interviews with doctors on Health care reform

Ramnik Dhaliwal, third-year medical student pursuing JD/MD at the University of Colorado Denver Medical School and CU Law School

YR: How would you like to see health care coverage run in this country--do you fear the 'socialized medicine' scenario?"

Dhaliwal: If you look at the statistics right now, the government, whether federal or state, and taxpayers are already one of the largest providers of health care in this country. Programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP [Children's Health Insurance Program] are all government run and funded. I believe that creating a scenario where the government drives the competition will not only allow more to be covered, but also will help drive prices down as private insurance companies will be forced to decrease costs through streamlining and becoming more innovative to be able to compete with the government programs.

Currently, insurance companies have no incentive to change. They are making billions of dollars in profit with a system that is so inefficient. Health care does not follow the normal economic model of supply and demand where increased demand brings in more players. Because the initial cost of starting an insurance company is so high the big players that have always been there pretty much have a monopoly.

Doctors are unable to really negotiate a great deal because any way they look at it, they must accept the insurance companies' demands since they are the only ones offering the product, which in this case is payment for [medical] services.

Everyone fears such large changes, but without change we will just run further into debt and more Americans will be unable to obtain needed medical care without incurring devastating debt.

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