National Health Care Reformer in Maine
Editor's Note: Here is the first clip from Dr. Margaret Flowers' address, “Two Portraits: Message and Messengers in Universal Health Care Reform”, to an attentive and enthusiastic audience at the Portland, Maine Rines Auditorium on May 10, 2012. We will post more videos from her Portland, Biddeford and Manchester, Maine venues as they become available.
There were many questions from the audience after the presentation that Dr. Flowers could not answer due to time constraints. If you were there and had a question that remained unanswered, please send it to us at info@maineallcare.org and we promise to get a response from Dr. Flowers, or from Maine artist Rob Shetterly, if your question was directed to him.
Thank you to everyone who participated.
We would like to say a special "thank you" Portland mayor Michael Brennan for his rousing introduction of Dr. Flowers and for his support of universal single payer health care for the people of Maine.
Dr. Margaret Flowers
Schedule for May 10-11, 2012
Maine AllCare, the Maine chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is excited to announce that we are bringing Dr. Margaret Flowers to Maine on Thursday May 10 and Friday May 11. Dr. Flowers will be appearing at several events:
Thursday, May 10, 9-10 am: "Health Reform: The case for a national single payer health system", Pediatrics Grand Rounds, Dana Education Center, Maine Medical Center, Portland. (Please note: This lecture is limited to Maine Medical Center staff only.)
Thursday, May 10, 12-1pm: “The Road to Universal Health Care”, Lunch and Learn, Harold Alfond Center, UNE College of Medicine, Biddeford (sponsored by the UNECOM student chapter of PNHP - free and open to the public)
Thursday, May 10, 5:30-6 pm: Rally for Universal Health Care, Monument Square, Portland (sponsored by Occupy Maine)
Thursday, May 10, 6-7:30 pm: “Two Portraits: Message and Messengers in Universal Health Care Reform”, Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library, Portland, A free public event with several co-sponsors: An unveiling of two portraits by Maine artist Rob Shetterly, an address by Dr. Margaret Flowers, with introductions by the Honorable Michael F. Brennan, mayor of Portland
Friday, May 11, 8:30-10:30 am: “Beyond Patient Care: Defining the Doctor’s Role in Health Care Policy”, Maine Medical Association Conference Room, Manchester, Maine. A joint presentation of Maine AllCare and the Maine Health Policy Study Group, with Dr. Flowers and a panel of 3 physicians: Jeffrey Barkin, MD, Maine Health Policy Study Group; Phil Caper, MD,Vice-chair of the Maine AllCare board; Rep. Linda Sanborn, MD, physician and State Representative from House District 130
We hope that you will be able to attend one or more of these events.
Please Join Us – a Free Public Event
on May 10, 2012 at 6:00 pm at the
Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library
Maine AllCare
and
Americans who Tell the Truth
present
“Two Portraits - Message and Messengers
in Universal Health Care Reform”
an unveiling by Rob Shetterly
Maine Artist and Activist
an address by Dr. Margaret Flowers
Congressional Fellow
Physicians for National Health Program
introduced by
The Honorable Michael F. Brennan
Mayor of Portland
CO-SPONSORS
Alliance for Democracy
American Academy of Pediatrics, Maine Chapter
Americans Who Tell the Truth
Consumers for Affordable Health Care
League of Women Voters, Portland Area
League of Young Voters
Maine Health Management Coalition
Maine Labor Group on Health
Maine People’s Alliance
National Association of Social Workers, Maine Chapter
Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine
Peninsula Peace and Justice of Blue Hill
UNE College of Medicine Chapter of PNHP
Union of Maine Visual Artists
Our very special guest and featured speaker: Margaret Flowers, MD
Dr. Flowers is a Maryland pediatrician with experience as a hospitalist at a rural hospital and in private practice. She is currently working on single-payer health care reform full-time. In addition to her activity as co-chair of the Maryland chapter and Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, Dr. Flowers is on the board of Healthcare-Now! and on the steering committee of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care. Dr. Flowers obtained her medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and did her residency at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
About the artist: Robert Shetterly
Robert Shetterly graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. In recent years Rob has been painting a series of portraits entitled Americans Who Tell the Truth. His portraits of past and current Americans form a traveling exhibit that is hosted by schools, universities, churches, libraries, museums and various community groups around the country. With this collection of portraits, Rob intends to remind people of the dignity, courage and importance of some of America’s truth-tellers, our own obligations as citizens, and that the struggle for equality and freedom is on-going. The Americans Who Tell the Truth collection includes more than 165 portraits and can be found on the AWTTT website. He lives in Brooksville, Maine, with his partner Gail Page, a painter and author of children’s books.
The second portrait to be unveiled by Rob Shetterly is of Quentin D. Young, MD.
Dr. Quentin Young, an internist who recently retired from a decades-long practice in the Hyde Park community on Chicago's South Side, is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who advocate for single-payer national health insurance – an improved Medicare for All.
Dr. Young has been a leader in public health policy and medical and social justice issues. He was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal physician in Chicago, and served for many years as chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. He blogs at The Huffington Post.
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Maine AllCare is grateful to Linda Putnam of The Portland Public Library for her help in organizing this very special educational program about health care reform.
Directions to the library, located at 5 Monument Square, Portland ME 04101 may be found here. http://www.portlandlibrary.com/locations/driving.htm
Yes, Maine, you can have health care for everyone.
And for less money than what we're paying today.
These are the two key themes of our new Maine AllCare brochure printed just in time for the various informational events state-wide, scheduled for May 10-11. The programs are organized around a two day speaking tour in Portland, Biddeford and Manchester by Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Maryland pediatrician and nationally recognized health care advocate. She is a former Congressional Fellow for PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Program.
Maine AllCare, together with over twenty other organizations are co-sponsors of the main event, set for the Portland Library Rines Auditorium at 6PM on May 10th. Please join us at this important presentation which also includes the unveiling of tow portraits by Brooksville, Maine artist and activist Rob Shetterly. (See more information on this page. A PDF of the brochure can be downloaded by clicking on the picture above.)
Where is Marcus Welby when you need him?
By Philip Caper, MD
Special to the BDN
April 19, 2012
Marcus Welby, M.D., the iconic general practitioner of 1970s TV, will probably never make a comeback. As I described last month, the overwhelming preference of young doctors is to go into medical specialties rather than primary care, mostly due to the much greater earning power of specialists. But there is another reason for this trend. During the past few decades, medical knowledge has dramatically expanded and many doctors decided that to keep up in their fields, they had to specialize.
This has led to a proliferation of specialists and subspecialists, resulting in growing fragmentation of medical care from a patient’s perspective and creating a medical maze that many have trouble negotiating. It has also created gaps in the continuity of care.
The federal health care reform law creates many programs designed to deal with this problem. They may not be enough. But even without them, changes in the way medical care is delivered are taking place at an accelerating pace.
Hospitals are consolidating and buying up doctors’ practices and other health care providers such as home health agencies, nursing homes and laboratories. Four systems are emerging in Maine centered around Bangor, Augusta, Lewiston-Auburn and Portland, and around 80 percent of Maine’s doctors are employed by one of them.
As a result, solo practitioners such as Dr. Welby will mostly be replaced by teams of health care workers who will function under the umbrella of these emerging health care systems, no longer earning money solely by directly providing services. They will earn their increased incomes by saving money through better management of more expensive technology.
Spurred on by the federal government, doctors and hospitals are adopting electronic systems for financial, administrative and clinical records to help control costs and improve quality or efficiency. But they will succeed if, and only if, the financial incentives that drive so much of our behavior in health care are reformed.
Already under way is a movement away from fee-for-service and toward so-called bundled payments. Rather than paying for each individual service, payers such as health insurers and government will pay a flat rate to a health care system for all services for a group of beneficiaries.
Health care systems, no longer constrained by a specific list of reimbursable services, will be able to expand the range of benefits they provide, as long as they don’t exceed their budget. They can do this by substituting low-cost services that are not now reimbursable but may be more appropriate, such as nursing home or home care, for more expensive high-tech services such as hospital care.
But just as fee-for-service can be abused by encouraging too many services, bundled payments can be abused by creating incentives to provide too little care. Most health care professionals would fight energetically against this temptation. The majority of us are committed to doing what’s right for our patients and are not businessmen at heart.
The culture of health care must change, and return to one driven by a nonprofit mission of healing, not the bottom line.
Rising health care costs are crippling our ability as communities, states and as a nation to address other needs. They are eating into our wages and our ability to fund education, infrastructure, public safety, economic security and other priorities.
In almost all other wealthy countries, the level of public satisfaction with health care is much higher than it is in the U.S. despite much lower spending. In those countries, everybody is in the same nonprofit system, and people feel they are being treated fairly.
Compare that with the endless bickering, disinformation, class and age conflict and fear-mongering that permeates the debate about health care in the U.S. Much of that conflict is driven by arguments about money — who pays, who benefits and how much.
A single, nonprofit health care system in Maine and the U.S. would go a long way toward fixing that problem.
This article by Dr. Phil Caper, Vice President of Maine AllCare, appeared in the online version of the Bangor Daily News.