Posts from — February 2010

“In a single-payer system, the government will fund health insurance, but private providers will continue to deliver care. Economies of scale will save the money to make this possible. Many Americans, including Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, concede that single-payer insurance is probably our most efficient option.^[2] But they worry that it lacks the spirit of the American market. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A single-payer system will harness the market’s strengths while addressing its limitations. The private health insurance market is inefficient, bloated by advertising, duplicated bureaucracies, dividends, and executive compensation. What’s worse, insurance policies are so complex and individuals’ future needs so unpredictable that consumers cannot make the informed selections that induce competition between insurers.

“However, consumers can create competition among healthcare providers. This is paramount because patients need the best healthcare, not the best middlemen to pay for it. Currently, providers are insulated from competition because private insurers often restrict coverage to select physicians. In addition, the 47 million uninsured Americans^[3] have little impact on the market. A single-payer system will give all consumers the power of choice and open all healthcare providers to the effects of consumer decisions.

Single-payer works because of the efficiency of specialization. The government will manage the paperwork and private entities will provide the care. Adam Smith would be proud.”

Prajwal Ciryam, a second-year MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Northwestern University and a Co-Founding Member of Health Care for All Illinois

Integrative Medicine (IM), according to the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, is the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient, focuses on the whole person, and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches that are informed by evidence. It is important to differentiate IM from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which is associated with IM therapies for which much of the evidence is still unsettled. The Medscape IM Resource Center seeks to help clarify these evolving issues for health professionals with best-evidence articles, educational activities, and expert commentary.

For further reading, please refer:

www.medscape.com/resource/integrativemed