Code Blue: Health Care in Crisis

As a former president of the American Medical Association and the World Medical Association, Annis here issues a hospital-like Code Blue alarm at what he considers the threat of socialized medicine posed by Clinton's national health care reform plans--which, he charges, ignore the social ills that underlie many poverty-associated problems, i.e., drugs, sexual promiscuity and violence. Annis attributes these conditions largely to our welfare economy. He also blames the prospect of socialized medicine for the closing of hundreds of hospitals, and for the financial crises of thousands more. Advocating a return to a market economy, as opposed to the third-party government- and employer-associated insurance system envisioned by ``managed competition'' (the approach touted by the Clinton administration), the author argues that health maintenance organizations would restrict patients' choice of doctors and make specialists available only through primary-care physicians. In his lobbying polemic, Annis refers favorably to plans by the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Heritage Foundation, both of which ``put the patient back in the driver's seat.'' (Sept.)