Unplugged: Doctors Debate Health Care Reform
"I want my patients to have choices... and I want them to have low cost options whenever possible," said Dr. Mandy Krauthamer, the executive director for Doctors For America, a group of doctors in support of reform. "If a public option gives my patients more choice, I'm for that."
Krauthamer was one of hundreds of medical doctors who joined President Obama at the White House Monday to support his plans for a health care overhaul. A government-sponsored health insurance plan, or "public option," is necessary in places like Georgia, Krauthamer told CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, where around 60 percent of residents are all covered by the same insurer.
Patients in Georgia and elsewhere should have more choices, agreed Dr. Donald Palmisano, former president of the American Medical Association and a spokesman for the Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights. However, he said a public option was not the right way to accomplish that.
"There's a way to fix that in the competitive model," Palmisano said.
Patients should be allowed to buy insurance across state lines, he said, as well as get tax credits to purchase their own private insurance, and have other "ways they can control their own destiny."
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Krauthamer acknowledged that the health care legislation before Congress "is not going to be the silver bullet to fix all things." Still, she said, "This is an important step forward."
She noted that one particularly important provision in the legislation gets little attention -- a plan to invest in training for primary care doctors. Those doctors, she said, "do most of the heavy lifting in health care."
As the health care debate reaches a critical stage, both those opposed and in favor of reform are turning to doctors to make their case.
Watch the debate above, as well as analysis from CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate about the White House's knowledge of suspected terrorist Najibullah Zazi.
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