Health care for the uninsured hit the front page of the New York Times May 29 in an article discussing a series of meetings -- secretly held since October -- by a 24-member group. The meetings have included leaders from such varied organizations as AARP, the AFL-CIO, National Governors Association, Johnson & Johnson, United States Chamber of Commerce and AMA. And the AAFP was right there in the midst of the action.
According to the article, the purpose of the gatherings has been to discuss, in a setting safe from political pressures, how to curb the rising tide of uninsured Americans.
"People are uninsured for different reasons," AAFP President Mary Frank, M.D., of Mill Valley Calif., who has participated in the meetings, told the Times. "No one solution will work for everyone. We need different solutions for different groups of the uninsured."
U.S. Census Bureau figures show 45 million people in the United States lacked health insurance in 2003, an increase of 1.4 million from 2002, said the article.
A few of the options on the table include requiring parents to provide health insurance to children up to, say, age 21; offering tax incentives to encourage people to purchase insurance; expanding Medicaid coverage; and creating state-run insurance purchasing pools.
The group plans to come up with a set of mutually agreeable proposals by the end of the year and will then forward its recommendations to Congress and the Bush administration.
