One hundred and fifty physicians, some of them promoting a single-payer system, met at the White House Monday to discuss healthcare reform.
Paul Hochfeld, MD, an emergency room physician and advocate for a single-payer system, said the current health reform bills on the table will not fix the healthcare crisis. "They will only perpetuate the miserable situation we presently have," he said.
Hochfield, representing Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors supporting a single-payer national health insurance, was not initially invited to the White House meeting but was issued an invitation while campaigning outside the White House gate that morning.
He called President Barack Obama's health reform plan incremental, and said it would leave for-profit, private insurance industry in the driver's seat. "The insurance companies will continue to deny claims and raise premiums," he said. "Tens of millions will remain uninsured and underinsured. There will be no cost control."
Hochfield said the president should propose expanding Medicare to cover all Americans.
Hochfeld is the leader of just-completed "Mad As Hell Doctors Tour," a 26-city, cross-country tour advocating "an expanded and improved Medicare for all."
The White House meeting comes as the Senate Finance Committee prepares to vote on a reform bill that is not expected to include a proposal to expand healthcare coverage to uninsured Americans through a public plan. Obama, like most Democrats in Congress, supports a public health option that would give the uninsured an opportunity to purchase government-run health insurance.
The public health option would also help to keep insurance companies "honest," Obama has said.