I am Pippa Abston, MD, PhD, a general pediatrician who sees patients as well as teaching medical students and residents in Huntsville, Alabama. The work published on this blog does not reflect the opinions of my employer or many of the organizations and boards I belong to. I am the physician coordinator for North Alabama Healthcare for All (NAHA), a Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Like the other members of PNHP, I advocate for universal single payer national health insurance– an improved, expanded Medicare for All.
Details of the PNHP proposal and supporting data are published at www.pnhp.org, and I encourage you to visit that site frequently for a comprehensive understanding of healthcare reform issues. My purpose in starting this blog is to give a personal perspective that supports the PNHP view, although this is not an official PNHP or NAHA sponsored site. Because I am not trying to duplicate the PNHP site, blog posts here will not be attempt to go in any certain order or cover every element of healthcare reform– instead, I will post thoughts I’ve had based on recent developments or conversations. I plan to try and write something about once a week or so, as well as addressing comments between posts. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section of this page if you have a particular topic you’d like me to address. To access the actual blog posts, click on the archives button to the right, and there is a drop-down menu.
If you belong to an organization in North Alabama and would like to have me come speak to your organization, please let me know. I do not charge for speaking in favor of reform.
I hope to have a dialogue with both supporters of reform, those who are undecided, and opponents– if we are going to make any progress on this, we need to learn to work together! I will not publish comments which are personally insulting to anyone or that have language I wouldn’t want my pediatric patients to read, but otherwise I will avoid editing anyone’s opinion.
On a personal note, I am the mother of two grown children whom I’m very proud of and married since 1985 to Barry Abston, an attorney here in Huntsville. We are members of the United Church of Huntsville and enjoy entering ballroom dance competitions together. My poetry group and I publish work together occasionally, some of which you can order on blurb.com– I sell these at cost only.
Addendum, April 3, 2010: It is customary in medical fields to provide a disclosure of any possible conflicts of interest before a talk or in a research publication. I am salaried, and my employment contract specifies that I must maintain my “Preferred Medical Doctor” (PMD) status with a specific insurer in our state. That PMD contract says that I must not do anything to discourage providers or patients from contracting with this insurer. Therefore, I will not be able to mention any specific insurer in my state by name.
I applaud your blog and admire your energy.
Wonder about your personal take on the health care legislation just passed?
Hi Wally– if you go to the “archives” button on the right, it has a drop-down menu where you can pull up my posts. I have one short post with my initial thoughts about the bill and some replies to comments. Since then I’ve had time to think about a few positive things — not really anything specificially IN the bill, since I think the good parts are deceptive, but about the ability to pass any sort of change at all! I’m going to write a post about that this weekend.
I’ll edit my homepage so people know to go to the archives– thanks!
Pippa
Dr. Abston, thank you so much for your dedication to Health Care Reform – something that is near and dear to my heart. This is especially important to me since I lost my brother Wallace G. Green, Jr. in February, 2010 to colon cancer. My brother Wally worked hard all his life but could not afford health insurance. He put off going to the doctor because he didn’t want to incur huge medical bills that he knew he could’nt pay. So he suffered horrible pain and died a horrible death.
It’s really hard for me to hear the politicians who brag that they will repeal health care reform, even though I know this reform has a long way to go to provide affordable health care insurance/care for everyone.
Thank you for your dedication to this enormous task.
Oh, Gina, I am so sorry about your brother. I wish people could understand that these are not “numbers” who are suffering and dying but real people whom we love.
It is hard to believe that any dedicated physician would oppose single payer system, and yet you and your peers in PNHP are a minority among the physicians. Thank you, Dr. Abston. Keep up the fight!
Is it? You should pay special attention to the majority of the profession that this will effect, they may know something you dont. It is telling that such a large majority are completely against it. That tells me that it isnt good for the industry after all.
It’s true that a majority of physicians in Alabama seem to oppose single payer. I haven’t seen any formal surveys. In national surveys, a majority of American physicians favor universal, national health insurance similar to the Canadian system. Organized medicine…the AMA and many state medical societies…oppose ‘single payer’ health care, but organized medicine is dominated by surgical specialists who would be most adversely affected by the economic consequences of effective control of health care cost. The AMA now counts only about 20-25% of American physicians as members.
Thanks Pippa. You go girl. I think we need total socialiazation of medicine..more than single payer. Physicians should work for the state and be paid a reasonable salary but probably far less than they make now. Do you also have Marxist leanings? I hope so. We are recruiting in North Alabama! Linda
Not Marxist but social democrat for sure! I have mixed feelings about an NHS type system. On the one hand, salaries make sense– I am salaried, and yes at significantly less than the average because of being a state employee. It is only a problem when I go into debt to get healthcare for a family member! I don’t have a reason to complain otherwise, because I chose it myself– no one forced me.
It might be a mistake to remove too many elements of choice from the employment options. For instance, right now I am free to choose which specialist to send my patients to and some are out of town (unless there are insurance restrictions on that). I would not want to be forced to refer within a specific network, because it would limit my ability to find the best care for my patients.
There are many, many studies looking at factors that create quality work/ motivation in all sorts of jobs. It turns out that a sense of autonomy is one of the top 3 factors (financial reward is NOT in the top 3). No, we don’t need to be totally unmonitored– but it would be a bad idea to force doctors to give up too much “free will.” You’d quelch some bad actors, but also some good ones.
I cant think of many physicians who would want to do that and make less, but what do I know, I am not a doctor.