Word: problem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...program. Dr. William G. Anlyan, vice president for health affairs at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., gives this example: "Today, the patient with a heart problem sees his family practitioner who refers him to a nearby cardiologist, who then refers the patient to a tertiary center like Duke. He's evaluated by a clinical cardiologist, then goes to a group of diagnostic laboratory cardiologists and radiologists. If the patient is to be operated on, the surgeons, the anesthesiologist, the pump team, the blood bank in the institution that feeds the pump are involved. The patient goes...
...immediate proposal is a bill imposing mandatory controls if the medical profession does not clamp down itself. Government interference is, of course, anathema to hospital officials and doctors. Michael Bromberg, executive director of the Federation of American Hospitals, claims that the public "doesn't care" about the cost problem. "But it is a good issue to demagogue about," he adds, "even if the President loses his bill...
Carter and HEW Secretary Joseph Califano are betting that Bromberg is wrong about a complacent public. Indeed, many members of Congress are feeling so much heat from constituents that they are also seriously beginning to consider a long-range, broad solution to the whole problem of high health care costs. A surprising total of 21 bills
John Alexander McMahon, president of the American Hospital Association, calls the proposal so horribly complex that it would be "unworkable." Actually, a few of the bill's supporters, including Senator Kennedy, agree that there is a problem. Kennedy's subcommittee on health last week modified the Carter plan by increasing the voluntary limit to 10.9%, more carefully defining the conditions under which a hospital could be exempt from mandatory controls, and setting Dec. 31, 1984, as the date when controls would end, unless Congress acted to extend them...
...against both points. Califano contends that hospitals braked their price increases only to counter the threat of Government controls, and predicts: "The day the Congress stops working on this problem, hospital rates will take off like a rocket headed for the moon." As for unfairness, Califano replies that, unlike other industries, hospitals operate in a "virtually noncompetitive system that says spend, spend, spend...