Letters
San Francisco Chronicle, May 6, 2011
Re “More family doctors charging patients annual fee” (May 3): It should come as no surprise that some physicians are resorting to charging an annual fee in order to make ends meet, as the reimbursements we receive from both public and private insurance programs continue to trend downward while the amount of time spent on paperwork increases.
And, yes, this could continue to drive up costs, but the fault lies not with physicians. Rather, it is our fragmented, inefficient, wasteful, profit-driven health care system that has created this situation, and the Affordable Care Act passed last year will do little to change it. If we had a single-payer (“Improved Medicare for All”) system, physicians would not have to deal with the hundreds of health insurance programs in California, and we could spend our time doing what we are trained to do: take care of patients.
Richard Quint, M.D.
Berkeley
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/06/EDU91JBV6N.DTL#ixzz1Lre7oEBt