Consumer confidence in health care remained steady in July 2010, according to a survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Health Care Consumer Confidence Index, Americans remain confident in their ability to afford health care and to maintain their health insurance coverage.

The Recent Health Costs Barriers Index dropped slightly from 96.6 in June to 95 in July. This index measures whether respondents have experienced barriers to health care, including putting off a needed visit to a doctor due to cost, skipping a recommended medical test, treatment or follow up visit because of cost, not filling a prescription because of cost or having difficulty paying medical bills. In addition, Americans’ concerns about future health care costs decreased slightly as well.

“We are one. If we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.”
– Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights Activist, Organizer of the 1963 March on Washington

Now is the time to join the National Physicians Alliance at its meeting in Houston, TX. If you have never been to an NPA event, you are truly missing out. Missing out on energy. You may arrive tired and disheartened, but you leave energized and full of momentum to make a difference. Whether you would like to join in NPA’s efforts to ensure the availability of quality health care to all in the US or to explore how big business looks to compromise your practice as a physician and the health of your patients, you can find it with this group.

Certainly, one of the best things about a National Physicians Alliance meeting is finding like minded physicians who are in the struggle to maintain the integrity of our profession, and who strive daily to put their patients first. That is what excites me. It is an exciting time in our country and everyone is talking about change. Now is the time for physicians like us to make a stand and be heard.

When I leave an NPA meeting I truly get what Bayard Rustin was saying. We are truly one!

(link to register for the NPA meeting)