73% of Doctors Support the Public Option

It seems that the insanity propelled by the conservative right during the Congressional recess last month got a lot of news coverage, but with very little lasting effect. A majority of Americans still support the public option (with polls ranging from 50-70% support), and after the President’s speech last week, about 2/3 of Americans support his health care plan.

And yesterday, we saw new numbers that shine a particularly strong light on the importance of the public option. A Robert Wood Johnson poll released yesterday showed that 73% of doctors support the public option.

That’s a big number from an important group of people in this debate whose voice had previously been collectively drowned out by the American Medical Association – a group that supposedly represents the best interest of doctors – although apparently not their opinions.

Here’s a particularly interesting piece of the NPR article:

“Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country,” says Keyhani, “we found that physicians, regardless — whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived — the support for the public option was broad and widespread.”

In other news, former Citizen Action co-Executive Director and current national campaign director of Health Care for America Now, Richard Kirsch, made his debut appearance on the Colbert Report last night. Let’s hope this helps spread the message about the importance of real health care reform to some folks who are not yet involved or interested in the debate.