The essay below was the winner of the Fall 2005 PNHP-NY Metro Medical Student Essay Contest. We will be using this and other submissions in drafting a PNHP recruitment brochure especially for med students.

Why Medical students should support
single payer national health insurance

By Yi Cai Isaac Tong
Sophie Davis Medical School

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that, "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." As future physicians we have the opportunity to reduce the suffering of many of the citizens in our community. But will we truly be successful and satisfied if we practice in a country with 45 million people uninsured?

I often ask myself if my future includes seeing patients whose only doctor is the one in the nearest emergency room. I ask myself if most of my future will be spent on the phone arguing with HMO's. I sometimes wonder if my future patients will have to choose between food and medicine. I truly hope the answers to these questions are all no.

A single payer healthcare system is the most powerful drug that physicians can give their community. Universal healthcare can potentially wipe away all access problems, and disparities between races and SES. As a medical student I took the Hippocratic Oath to serve humanity and heal those who seek my help. Please let me keep that oath and support a single payer healthcare system.

Working closely with the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), PNHP has medical student members both locally and nationally. If you are interested in working with our students at New York metropolitan area medical schools, please contact us. Students are or will soon be working on medical school campuses throughout the area — Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, CUNY Medical School/Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, Mt. Sinai Medical School, New Jersey Medical School, New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, New York Medical College, New York University School of Medicine, SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, SUNY at Stony Brook, Weill Medical College of Cornell University — to stimulate campus-based activity for universal health care, including bringing PNHP speakers to campus.