AMA Backs Individual Mandate

[kpete]

Source: Med Page Today

AMA Backs Individual Mandate

By Marianne Mattera, Managing Editor, MedPage Today
Published: June 20, 2011

CHICAGO -- The American Medical Association's House of Delegates voted this afternoon to endorse the concept of an individual mandate that requires most U.S. residents to buy health insurance, reaffirming the organization's longstanding position on the controversial issue

Read more: http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/27166

[naaman fletcher]

1. This sucks

Forcing us to buy what we can't afford. forcing us to buy a shitty, over-priced product from an industry that is exempt from anti-trust laws. It is the worst possible solution. Single payer health care, now!

[ixion]

2. well of course they would... it means more $ for them

so no big shocker there.

Health insurance is NOT health 'care', and being forced to by a crappy, over-priced product from a FOR PROFIT corporation is BS.

[savannah43]

4. I don't follow your logic.

The mandate forces people to buy insurance, not visit doctors. In fact, most of the insurance policies will provide only minimum coverage and after the mandatory payment of the premiums, many will not have enough money to make the co-pays to physicians. This plan was written by the health insurance industry. If anyone thinks they're going to get even mediocre coverage, they're going to be disappointed. Why doctors would approve of the mandate is beyond me. I do not see them making more money, so if this is what they think, they will be disappointed, too.

[ixion]

5. It's not just the health insurance lobby, it's Big Med that profits

Mandating health insurance effectively turns insurance agencies into quasi government entities, but for profit. Big profit. But the revenue stream doesn't stop there, it will wind it's way through the hospitals, the pharmacies and drug makers, medical industry suppliers, and doctors as well.

It would have been impossible to game the industry as it has been if doctors had not been willing participants.

[Heywood J]

3. Hmmm... physicians vote to endorse the concept of being forced to purchase

a product that will pay money to physicians.