Physicians demand answers from presidential candidates

As part of our election poll, we asked Medical Economics’ readers, “If you could ask the presidential candidates one question, what would you ask?” Here were some of the inquiries that summed up the majority of replies by those taking our poll.

1. Why should we not have the same healthcare insurance as you?

2. Why are health insurers allowed to make such huge billion dollar profits and pay their CEOs multiple of millions while at the same time denying the public care and not adequately paying the physicians who make life and death decisions daily?

3. What are you going to do to lure more people into primary care medicine and retain those that are in it now? 

4. What would you propose to give doctors and patients more control of their health and remove all of the bureaucracy with the documentation requirements that take away from direct patient care?

5. Why should doctors accept insurance given much higher deductibles, increasingly difficult billing problems, necessary and bad faith tactics of insurers to evade payment, and the extremely low level of reimbursements now coming from the insurance companies? 

6. If you repeal Obamacare, what would you say to millions of uninsured who will immediately  lose health coverage? 

7. Why is the government not addressing tort reform? It is obvious that the legal profession is in much need of regulation to prevent their frivolous attack on the healthcare profession and pharmaceutical drug industry that cause increased healthcare costs.

8. Why don't you have multiple practicing physicians advising you, rather than academicians, and non-practicing docs? 

9. Why is my compensation regulated and controlled by people who don't understand the value of what we physicians bring to the table? 

10. With the rising cost of healthcare and the increased responsibility for payment by patients, I am finding it more difficult to keep my practice open. How do you see that changing?

11. Are you aware that the practice of medicine today has become so burdensome that people don't want to do it anymore and how will you address that? What will you do to entice more people to desire a career in this field?

12. Children are our future. Yet current health care financing, including Medicaid (where children are the majority of recipients) undervalues the services they require at the for the benefit of the elderly. What will you do specifically to provide better health care for the children of America?