Misinformation Confounds Patients and Physicians about Healthcare Reform

Lots of false information and erroneous claims about healthcare reform are circulating and confusing the national healthcare debate. Are your patients asking you for answers?

As the Congressional summer recess continues, patients will continue to be bombarded with information (some of it grossly inaccurate and misleading). We can all find something either rumored or actually present in one of the several versions of healthcare reform to which we object. Many of us have closely held personal and political beliefs which deserve to be respected. But as the health reform debate continues, family physicians need to stay out of the weeds and stick with emphasizing our key overarching principles as family physicians who put patients first.

As we talk to our patients and our lawmakers this summer, let us emphasis a big picture vision for what needs to happen to make our current dysfunctional system better. As the two representatives from the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) board of directors (AAFP President Dr. Ted Epperly and Director Dr. Ken Bertka) emphasized to attendees of the OAFP Members Assembly on Aug. 7-9, we need to strongly and passionately advocate for change based on the following core beliefs that we share:

• Any health reform must be built on the cornerstone of primary care 
• Healthcare reform must include payment reform
• America must convert its present “sick care” system to one that emphasizes prevention
• Everyone needs to have coverage and access to healthcare; everyone needs a patient-centered medical home team led by a family physician that provides them with comprehensive, coordinated, integrated and longitudinal care
• Status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable. The current system is fragmented, uncoordinated, duplicative, reduces productivity, accelerates cost and promotes inefficiency.

Americans have talked about, criticized and worried about healthcare reform for decades. Policy makers, economists, lawmakers and patients have called for healthcare reform for too long. This year, there is real opportunity for fixing our broken healthcare system. We cannot allow politics – Democrat or Republican – to stand in the way of real reform.

The reform debate is loaded with misinformation and inflammatory statements aimed at confusing people and inducing fear. True healthcare reform is NOT about abortion, NOT about euthanasia, NOT about rationing and NOT about a government takeover of healthcare. It is NOT about reading the bill. It is about recognizing the need for change and understanding proposed solutions.

We need reform that provides stable health coverage for everyone and ensures access to a personal physician. We need reform that removes barriers to healthcare based upon pre-existing conditions or employment status. We need reform that gives patients quality, affordable healthcare options while preserving the marketplace.

If we want meaningful reform, we need to let our legislators know that it is time to stop playing politics and solve the healthcare crisis. We must find a uniquely American solution that controls skyrocketing healthcare costs and gives our patients peace of mind when it comes to their healthcare.

And, as patients ask you questions about what is in the healthcare reform legislation (and there is absolutely nothing solid in any of the bills as yet), here are some resources to help patients sort out fact from fiction.

• www.factcheck.org 
• www.politifact.com

Other Resources

• USA Today Article, "Healthcare legislation: What's true, What's not. Sorting Out the Facts of Congress' Current Proposals"
• Stephen Pearlstein column from www.washingtonpost.com rebutting recent attacks on reform 
• Kaiser Family Foundation, which has a compendium of health reform information including an extensive side-by-side comparison of the major healthcare reform proposals as well as a comparison of only the House and Senate HELP Committee bills
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has devoted a large section of its Web site to health reform 
• New State-by-State Health Reform Fact Sheets from Obama Administration
• White House video explaining the President's position on health insurance reform.
• Article posted on the House Committee on Education & Labor Web site