Ask your doctor.

The surprise? The majority support a public option.

Some sub-groups, such as doctors who have less patient contact than others (radiologists are an example) are less supportive but, even so, a majority of that group still supported the public option.

More physicians in the Northeast (69.7%) than in the South (58.9%)  supported the public option—but still, in the South, that is a comfortable margin.

Conclusions:

• “Nonetheless, it seems clear that the majority of U.S. physicians support using both public and private insurance options to expand coverage. ‘
• “A majority of physicians also support the expansion of Medicare.
• “Support for the public option is consistent across physician specialties, practice settings, and regions of the country.
• “Therefore (that) should be carefully considered by lawmakers as they finalize legislation to reform health care and provide coverage for 47 million uninsured Americans.”

Study Limitations:

• “Response rate of 43%. That is typical of doctors’ response rates for other studies. “A 43% response rate for physicians, the most difficult population to survey, does not suggest any sample bias.
• “The characteristics of the physicians responding and not responding are the same.” Again, that argues against sample bias.
• Physicians’ views could have evolved between the study’s completion and this summer’s debate, but, write  the authors, they did not find any differences between the first and second waves of the study.
• Other options, if included in the health care reform draft, were not ones doctors were asked about, the authors wrote.

(Ed. Note: This study’s results were published on the online New England Journal of Medicine yesterday. This is a full, free text article which the editors offer on matters of public policy. For that reason, TPR is quoting  far more  extensively from the article than usually is done for other research studies. The editors want people to know what the study says, which is why you see so much more original text than you are used to.)

New England Journal of Medicine

The text has been reformatted for ease of reading. No text changes were made. References to chart not displayed were deleted. You can see the chart by using the link.

• Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private options.
• Only 27.3% supported offering private options only.
• Respondents — across all demographic subgroups, specialties, practice locations, and practice types — showed majority support (>57.4%) for the inclusion of a public option.
• Primary care providers were the most likely to support a public option.
• Among the other specialty groups, the “other” physicians —those in fields that generally have less regular direct contact with patients, such as radiology, anesthesiology, and nuclear medicine — were the least likely to support a public option,though 57.4% did so.
• Physicians in every census region showed majority support for a public option, with percentages in favor ranging from 58.9% in the South to 69.7% in the Northeast.
• Practice owners were less likely than non-owners to support a public option(59.7% vs. 67.1%, P<0.001), but a majority still supported it.
• Finally, there was also majority support for a public option among AMA members (62.2%).

Citation: New England Journal of Medicine.This article (10.1056/NEJMp0908239) was published on September 14, 2009, at NEJM.org.