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The American College of Physicians says that the United States needs a healthcare system that provides care for everyone, either through a universal health insurance system, such as the UK NHS, or through a pluralistic system that involves the government and private organisations.
The college's three-part position paper was published on its website (www.annals.org). It will appear in the 1 January issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine . The college has 124 000 members and is second only to the American Medical Association in membership.
The college released the report "to provoke a national discussion, during this critical election year, on how to make the US the best performing healthcare system in the world . . . our country's current pluralistic system without universal healthcare coverage is unacceptable and puts us behind other countries."
It proposed two possible ways to achieve universal health coverage for Americans.
A single payer, government run system would cover...