Comment & Debate
Laura K. Altom, BS, MSIII and Larry R. Churchill, PhD, Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics Laura K. Altom, Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee. “Pay, Pride, and Public Purpose: Why America’s Doctors Should Support Universal Healthcare”. 2007 – “Yet the uninsured are not the only natural constituency for an inclusive system. Over the past decade there has been a growing awareness that those with reasonably good insurance coverage also have a vital stake in a universal system. The reason is that few workers and their families can be confident that their current access to affordable care is not vulnerable to sudden change. Since health insurance in the United States is largely provided as an employee benefit, most of us would risk medical impoverishment if we were to be fired or laid off. Many of those who lose employment can continue their coverage through COBRA or seek to purchase individual insurance policies, although both options entail large increases in premiums. Our friends and family members who have experienced this misfortune have only been able to find high-priced insurance, with low benefits, severe limitations, and extensive preexisting condition clauses, so that their most frequently anticipated and most extensive health needs would still have to be paid out-of-pocket. But being laid off is not the only vulnerability.”