By NYCeve (Eve Gittelson)

A just released poll of U.S. doctors shows overwhelming support for a public option. 63% of the doctors surveyed said they favor giving Americans a choice of public or private health insurance.

I wonder why?

Could it be because physicians are on the front lines, and see the human destruction wrought by our broken system. Small and trivial details like skyrocketing premiums which cause 14,000 Americans to drop their insurance every day.

A new nationwide poll found that a large majority of doctors support a public option.

“Most doctors — 63 percent — say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance,” NPR reports. “In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they’d like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.” The researchers found strong support among all types of doctors: primary care providers, specialists, both urban and rural doctors and among members of the American Medical Association, which has opposed the public optio n. The survey was published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, one of the researchers, says doctors already have experience with government-run health care, with Medicare. “And she says the survey shows that, overall, they like it.” Keyhani adds that “physicians have sort of signaled that a public option that’s similar in design to Medicare would be a good way of ensuring patients get the care that they need” (Shapiro, 9/14).

Meet Rick Colby.

When Columbus, Ohio, health care lobbyist Rick Colby writes his monthly check of $2,556 for his family’s health insurance, his hand trembles.

“It’s a staggering amount of money and there’s nothing I can do about it,” the 49-year-old Colby says. His insurance rates soared over the past decade after his daughter, Lauren, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and his wife, Trish, developed breast cancer.

After his daughter died at age 8 in 2007, his rates dropped by a few hundred dollars a month — but then shot up by 20 percent the following year, he said.

Blue Cross of Michigan requested a stunning 56% rate hike on individual polices, the insurance commissioner approved a 22% increase.

31% rate hike from Catamount Health in Vermont.

And in Utah:

The Utah employer’s average annual share of family premiums was $4,861 in 2000, and it rose 97 percent to $9,594 in 2009, the report notes. It is based on data from the U.S. Census and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The amount of coverage Moynahan’s family can afford has continued to dwindle. Last year, they found a plan with a $2,000 annual deductible, which required them to continue to pay 30 percent of all costs after paying that amount. But when the insurer contacted them in June after three years of 20 percent annual increases, they got desperate.

Beleaguered citizens of Utah (and everywhere), are forced to pay much more for bare bones health insurance coverage—what we call junk insurance. Then they scramble some more to pay escalating medical bills (depite being insured). How odd that their senator Orrin Hatch proudly proclaims, Republicans won’t even support the really bad bill Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee is crafting.</a&g t;