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 – “Paying Patients. Prior to the advent of Medicare, 35% of the elderly lived in poverty; in 2003 that number was at 9%.[7] Medicare is also credited with desegregating US hospitals, being the largest funder of graduate medical education and creating the field of geriatrics. But for our purposes here, the critical change was creating millions of newly insured patients. In spite of the potential boon to physician incomes, organized medicine strenuously opposed Medicare, a situation in which a misidentified fear of socialism triumphed over common sense and economic self-interest.”