Ninety-seven percent of CMA members favor either incremental or fundamental health care reform over no reform, according to a recent survey of 407 CMA members. While CMA member physicians are unified in their support for health reform, they are evenly split (44 percent to 44 percent) on whether they favor or oppose the health reform legislation being debated in Congress.

In late January, when health reform was still hot, CMA took a poll of our members to gauge attitudes towards the health care system, health reform, and the health care reform legislation being debated by Congress. To ensure a representative sample of physicians from the myriad modes of practice, specialties, and geographic areas, the pollster adjusted the sample to meet CMA’s membership demographic breakdown.

For the preferred system of health care financing, a strong majority of CMA members (66 percent) favor a pluralistic system that is a mix of government and private payers over single-payer (19 percent) or a free market system without public insurance (13 percent).

In addition to unified support for the concept of health reform, CMA members showed support across all demographics for specific provisions of health reform legislation, including:

• protecting MICRA, California’s law limiting noneconomic damages in medical liability cases (94 percent favor)
• prohibiting insurance companies from denying health coverage because of pre-existing conditions or changes in health status (89 percent favor)
• providing tax credits and subsidies to low-income families and small sized employers so they can purchase health insurance (88 percent favor)
• expanding health insurance coverage to 95 percent of the uninsured (82 percent favor)
• providing funding to develop best practices and quality measures for health care providers (76 percent).

CMA members were equally skeptical of other provisions, including:

• Making physician quality reporting information available to the public without safeguards to ensure accuracy (79 percent oppose)
• Allowing insurance companies and health plans to ignore some state laws protecting physicians and consumers (77 percent oppose)

Throughout the often contentious health reform debate, CMA has relied on the policy developed by the democratically elected CMA House of Delegates (HOD) to formulate our position and priorities for health care reform. This poll was undertaken at the request of the HOD and the CMA Executive Committee to ensure that our members have an additional opportunity to voice their opinions and have an impact on our approach to health care reform legislation.

While health reform may have been sidetracked by recent events, congressional leaders continue to work on the issue. Looking forward, CMA will use the results of this poll and future member opinion research to ensure that we continue to represent the interests of all California physicians.