Universal Care: Greater support for national health insurance

Doctors are increasingly inclined to let Uncle Sam pay all of the healthcare bills, according to the results of a survey conducted in 2007 and recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Some 59 percent of the study's 2,193 respondents agreed that they "support government legislation to establish national health insurance." That's up 10 percentage points from five years ago, when a similar survey was conducted and published in the same journal. The most recent results showed the strongest support for national healthcare among psychiatrists and pediatric subspecialists. Among general internists, 64 percent were in favor; among family physicians, the tally was 60 percent.