Citizens' Group Echoes AAFP Recommendations

AAFP's position on providing health care coverage for all aligns strongly with of a federally mandated, national commission studying America's health care. That commission, the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, released six recommendations in September that call for universal coverage in a system that protects patients' financial well-being -- positions long-held by the Academy.

The Citizens' Health Care Working Group recommendations echo those set forth earlier by the AAFP Task Force on Health Care Coverage for All (PDF file: 6 pages / 65 KB. More about PDFs.). "These (citizens' group) recommendations reflect a desire by an overwhelming majority of Americans that everyone has access to affordable, appropriate health care by an established date in the not-too-distant future -- 2012," the report says. "Encompassed in this goal is the need to make changes in the current health care system to expand access to care for all those who need it, as well as to improve outcomes and increase the value for money spent."

Among recommendations independently put forth by both the task force and the working group are

With the recent mid-term elections having changed control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, health care may rise to the top of the national agenda, said Mary Frank, M.D., AAFP past president and chair of the AAFP Task Force on Health Care Coverage for All.

"With a different environment in Washington over the next two years, I think we may see new proposals that will help set the stage for the next presidential election cycle," she said. "Health care should become a bigger issue" for Congress.

The AAFP task force's first-year report recommends building on the current system of private and employer-based insurance and expanding government programs. Those are important first steps, but "when we look at all three of these, we see that there are problems with them and those problems are the reason people are not insured," said Frank. "So we are now looking at the broader system that prevents people from having coverage."

During the next 12 months, the task force will review issues such as the cost of insurance and medical care and the structure of government programs and their funding. As part of that review, the task force will look at other countries' systems, Medicaid and Medicare demonstration projects, and issues affecting the primary care workforce.

"I don't see us making recommendations that say, 'We have to have a system like country X,'" said Frank. "We have to come up with a plan that is specifically American, that takes into account our independent thinking, our emphasis on individual choice, our use of technology. It needs to be a plan that takes all these particularly American characteristics to find an American solution to an American problem."

Nor is it likely the task force will release step-by-step recommendations for health system reform. Instead, the group will issue "concepts and principles -- a roadmap for changing the system," said Frank. "What's important for our members is that we can't turn one system off and turn another system on. But we can build a plan for change over the course of several years. We need the roadmap and the plan to get from point A to point B to Point C. Ultimately, we will get where we want to be."