AMA: Closing the uninsured gap hinges on personal coverage

Supporters say tax incentives and penalties will help drive a requirement that individuals and families obtain health coverage.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. July 3, 2006.

Chicago -- When it comes to tackling the growing uninsured problem in the United States, the American Medical Association says policy-makers need to use both carrots and sticks.

In a major policy move for the Association, the AMA for the first time voted to support a requirement that people with sufficient means obtain a minimum level of preventive and catastrophic health care coverage. The requirement would start with individuals and families earning greater than 500% of the federal poverty level and would expand to the rest of the nation once sufficient federal tax credits or other subsidies are in place to help out with the purchase.

Under the AMA plan, the government would use the tax code to achieve compliance, possibly by handing out significant tax penalties to people who choose not to follow the directive.

For some physicians, such personal responsibility in health care can't come soon enough.

"This country is not going to tolerate the continued rise of the uninsured, and there must be some mechanism that we can fall to that will address this issue," said Bohn Allen, MD, a general surgeon and delegate from Texas. "One of them is individual responsibility, and I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to ask."

Requiring people to take responsibility for their preventive care and to plan for unforeseen medical emergencies when they can afford to do so will have a major effect on the health care system, said AMA Trustee Ardis Hoven, MD.