Many aspects of health care in the United States are the best in the world; however, escalating expense, lack of access and variable quality must be addressed. Continuation of the current system or creation of a reformed system that will cost trillions of dollars, likely bankrupting the United States, is not acceptable.
Below are the principles of health care reform that Society for Vascular Surgery® (SVS) supports:
- All Americans should have access to health care, which includes affordable coverage choices.
- The doctor-patient relationship must be preserved.
- Quality of care can and must be improved through comparative effectiveness and other methods.
- Medical malpractice reform is urgently needed.
- Meaningful reform must include elimination of the Sustainable Growth Rate formula for physician payment and rebasing of the perceived “debt” to Medicare that has been brought on by this flawed formula.
- Insurance carriers must be regulated to exclude pre-existing conditions, caps on benefits, and egregious bonuses for executives.
- Specialist services are just as important to health care in the United States as primary care services.
- Prevention and healthy lifestyles including exercise, weight loss, tobacco avoidance, blood pressure control, and appropriately targeted disease screenings are the most important methods for maintaining health and reducing medical expense.
- The next generation of doctors, including specialists, must be educated so that shortages are alleviated.
- Adequate funding for research must be maintained.
Affirmed by SVS Board of Directors, January 2010
