WHY NOW?

The health care system is broken.

• Doctors feel it when they are buried in bureaucracy and their malpractice insurance costs are skyrocketing.
• Patients feel it when they lose their insurance, struggle to navigate a fragmented system, or are victims of medical error.
• Communities feel it when public health epidemics such as obesity and diabetes spiral out of control, with devastating costs to local economies
• Our country feels it as poor return on investment. The U.S. spends 16% of our GDP or 1.8 TRILLION dollars on health care, the highest of any country, and yet our overall health care ranks 37th in the world.

Trust in the medical profession is eroding

• Patients are losing faith in the medical profession to solve these problems - trust in the medical profession is slipping away as pharmaceutical companies buy influence through our medical organizations and our medical education system; some physician organizations prioritize political agendas concerned with physician compensation and malpractice over medicine and health issues; and physicians increasingly refuse care to the uninsured or individuals with specific insurance plans.

Corporations are dominating health care and medicine

• Corporations are dictating the doctor patient relationship. Administrative and insurance related paperwork inundates physicians, squeezing time away from meaningful patient care, while companies influence clinical guidelines and literally help write our nation's health care laws.

Physicians have not led.

• Our health care system is in desperate need of help from physicians who are uniquely positioned to understand both the business and the human side of medical practice. Many traditional medical organizations have prioritized financial issues such as Medicare reimbursement and malpractice premiums to the near exclusion of the health care crises in the country, including the degradation of the public health system, the rising number of uninsured, and the corruption of medical education and practice by extreme corporate involvement.

The NPA will build new leadership to solve the greatest problems in our health care system and restore trust in our profession

• The NPA will bring physician leadership to our profession and our communities by prioritizing in our work and actions, issues that affect health over physician payment. We will prioritize improving access to health care, eliminating health disparities, freeing medicine from corporate influence, and restoring the core values of our profession: service, integrity and advocacy.

Doctors are strongly committed to the core values of medicine and are now demanding a leadership organization that reflects that commitment

• Hundreds of thousands of doctors volunteer their time every day, providing life-saving charity care, and thousands advocate for better access to care. This collective ethic and energy need to be harnessed to bring real change.
• The NPA will put patients first in our advocacy by including them in our governance and standing together to fix our broken system.