COUNTYWIDE : Doctor Group Backs Canada-Model Care

A group of county doctors endorsed a national health plan Tuesday that they said would provide medical care for all, stabilize medical costs, do away with cumbersome billings and, in one fell swoop, do away with the entire health insurance industry.

Led by Dr. Howard B. Waitzkin, a professor of internal medicine at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, a small gathering of physicians and residents said they favored a plan by Physicians for a National Health Program that is modeled on the Canadian health system.

That proposal is outlined in an article in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. In conjunction with its publication, leaders of the group held press conferences around the country to promote the plan.

It is one of a half-dozen competing national health insurance proposals that have been introduced at the federal level; a related version has been introduced in California.

Although Waitzkin said he and other leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program have spoken to business round tables, chambers of commerce and the Assn. of Manufacturers about their proposal, none of those groups has so far formally endorsed the plan. Also, no county legislator has endorsed the plan, Waitzkin said.

Late Tuesday, Dr. Richard Kammerman, president-elect of the Orange County Medical Assn., said that he is not familiar with details of the plan but that several Canadian physicians have told him that their health system--really a health “rationing system,” he said--causes long waits for needed care: six months to a year for a hip or knee replacement and one to two years for kidney dialysis.

A “coronary bypass just isn’t available for six months,” he said, “so the patient is either dead” or may have gone to the United States for surgery.

But Waitzkin and UCI medical resident Steve Ash said the Physicians for a National Health Program would do away with the so-called “wallet biopsy,” in which a doctor treats a patient based on his ability to pay a medical bill.