Health Care Proposals Must Address Practical Issues For Patients, Physicians, Opinion Piece States

February 22, 2008 – 7:22 am | posted in Public Health

Proposals to address the “health crisis that we all share — getting good, timely medical service and being able to afford it” — require physicians and politicians to answer three “critical” questions: “Will you get past your partisanship to talk to one another, will you feel my pain and are your hands clean?” Robert Lipsyte, an author and a member of the USA Today board of contributors, writes in an opinion piece. Under “all the policy wonk discussions about mandated care for all vs. affordable care” and “single-payer government systems such as Medicare vs. private policies” is the “heart of health care reform” — the “doctor and the patient finding their way together toward compassionate care,” he writes.

According to Lipsyte, physicians “are separated by their specialties,” and “it’s hard to get them to treat” patients as a “complete system.” “Maybe under the present health care system, doctors don’t have the time or the financial incentive to talk to one another more about their patients,” and maybe “we have to find ways to get them to meet and mingle,” he writes, adding, “I’ll vote for the candidate who nails that into a platform.”

In addition, “most doctors still don’t really know what” patients “go through,” and “medical school courses taught by doctor-patients” could “make a big difference,” Lipsyte writes, adding, “Politicians can make that happen.”

He also writes that, although “thousands of Americans die every year from diseases contracted in hospitals,” most patients “don’t ask the toughest question because they are not comfortable enough with their doctors or the medical environment to do it in a friendly, non-challenging way” and are “afraid of causing antagonism.” He adds, “We need to be made equal partners in the system so we can talk freely” (Lipsyte, USA Today, 2/20).

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