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The West German health care system: a critique
1Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205.
Abstract:
Several leading health policy staff of the AFL-CIO and major unions met with the Board of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) in May 1990. They described the active discussions currently ongoing within the AFL-CIO Health Care Committee, which is composed of 14 international union presidents and sets AFL-CIO policy on health care issues. Some union presidents reportedly favored a single-payer, Canadian-style approach, while others apparently preferred a proposal modeled after the West German system, which preserves a major role for insurance companies. The PNHP Board was emphatic in its preference for the single-payer approach. Board member Dr. Vicente Navarro wrote the following letter to the union presidents on the AFL-CIO Health Care Committee detailing his critique of the West German approach.