By Erin Wiltgen

chh@heraldsun.com; 918-1035

CHAPEL HILL — United and ready for action, a handful of UNC doctors will host White Coats Speak Out, a press conference for local doctors and health care professionals, at noon Friday in front of North Carolina Memorial Hospital of UNC Hospitals.

The focus of the event is to give local medical personnel an opportunity to show support for proposed health care reform. The event will feature several doctors’ and patients’ stories demonstrating the faults of the current health care system and the benefits of a public health option.

“I don’t think we as a group have really spoken up,” said Jessica Lin, a UNC ID fellow and organizer of the event. “Everyone knows where the drug companies, the insurance companies, all these special interest groups stand. But I don’t think anyone knows where doctors stand.”

According to an NPR poll, America’s doctors stand firmly in favor of a public insurance option. About 73 percent of doctors nationwide said they supported some sort of public option, which is higher than the 50-70 percent of support most polls find from the American public, the NPR poll said.

Dr. Charles Van der Horst, an organizer of the press conference, said it’s high time for that 73 percent of doctors to speak up. The country is facing a crisis situation, he said, and health care reform can’t wait.

“It’s a system that’s out of control,” said Van der Horst, a professor of medicine at UNC School of Medicine and an attending physician at UNC Hospitals. “And yet the quality of care in the U.S. lags behind countries that spend half of what we spend. It’s not sustainable.”

Lin said doctors need to speak up because they see the problems in U.S. health care every day.

“We, more than anyone else, understand what are the problems in our health care system,” she said. “We see the patients in the ER who don’t have insurance, who wait until they have a stroke or a heart attack, and then our hands our tied.”

“The debate so far has been limited to talk-show hosts who have excellent insurance,” Van der Horst said. “They’re all millionaires. They’re not clinicians. They don’t know the extent of the problem. I’ve been taking care of patients for 30 years, and I’ve seen the slow destruction of the health care system of the U.S.”

But until now doctors have had little opportunity to express their opinions on health care reform, limited by chaotic work schedules to signing petitions and writing blind letters. Uninsured and underinsured patients also are reluctant to talk about their experiences because they’re embarrassed, Van der Horst said.