America has some of the best doctors and hospitals in the world. Our universities and scientists are on the cutting edge, constantly finding ways to make us more healthy.

But a lot of pieces of the health care system are breaking down, and we see the evidence of that everywhere. More and more of our money is getting sunk into health care – and yet other countries are getting healthier than we are! A growing number of hard-working people cannot get fair, affordable health insurance.

Insurance companies do everything they can to sell you insurance when you're young and healthy – the minute you get older or get sick, they drop you or raise your premiums so high that you can't afford them. More and more small business owners can't get a deal on health insurance for their employees or even for themselves.

Health reform will get us started on fixing a lot of these problems. Reform will make rules that will make insurance companies give people a fair deal. It will encourage innovation so that doctors, clinics, hospitals, and states can figure out the most effective ways to keep America healthy. It will make sure Medicare stays around. It will provide subsidies to help our small businesses do the right thing and get insurance for their employees while staying afloat. And it will provide subsidies to help individual people do the right thing for themselves and their families.

It will create the change we need to keep health care from sinking our economy and will put millions more Americans on the path toward a stable, healthy future.

Most major doctor organizations support reform, including:

• American Medical Association (240,000 doctors)
• The American Osteopathic Association (40,000 doctors)
• American College of Physicians (120,000 doctors)
• American Academy of Family Physicians (94,000 doctors)
• American Academy of Pediatrics (60,000 doctors)
• American College of Surgeons (76,000 doctors)
• American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (52,000 doctors)
• American College of Cardiology (37,000 doctors)
• American Gastroenterological Association (17,000 doctors)
• Society of Hospital Medicine (6,000 members)
• And many state and local societies.

(Special thanks to Dr. Christopher Hughes for compiling this list on his blog: http://cmhmd.blogspot.com/2009/09/organized-medicine-on-reform.html.)

We are a group of doctors from around the country volunteering our time for health reform. We see patients every day – teachers, engineers, moms, waitresses, small business owners. We see the urgency of our health care crisis in our clinics and in the hospital, and we know we need to stand up and speak out. We know that as a nation we can do better and that we are on the verge of doing better through the health reform that has already passed in the House and Senate.

Health reform has a lot of pieces to it, but we know that when people see what is really in health reform, they get it. This reform is for all of us – doctors, patients, Americans. Politics may make passing health reform a challenge, but we know that one thing that is stronger than Washington gridlock is the collective will of the people.

The doctors answering questions doing this voluntarily and their answers represent their own personal opinions. Organizations helping to make this project possible include Doctors for America, FamiliesUSA, CIR/SEIU and The National Physicians Alliance.

You can help!

The fate of health reform depends on us. Take action today. Here's how:

Spread the word about this site. Share this website! Post it on Facebook and Twitter and email it to your friends and family. Just click on the links below!

Call Congress. Make sure your Senators and Representatives hear from you about health reform today! Use our easy tool to find contact information and record your call.

Call the White House. Make sure President Obama and his administration keep fighting for the reform we need.
–Email the White House through their contact form.
–Or call 202-456-1111.

Here are some places to get more information about reform.

• New England Journal of Medicine -
  Health Care Reform Center
• Kaiser Famiy Foundation -
  Side-by-Side Comparison of Health Reform Bills
• Commonwealth Fund -
  Analysis of the House and Senate Bills
• Center for American Progress -
  Fact Sheets on Health Reform for Each State
• Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development -
  Statistics on the U.S. Health Care