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Kansas City Doctors Urge Health Overhaul

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-865878.mp3

Kansas City, MO – As lawmakers in D.C. hone various committee-approved health proposals, several area doctors are renewing their appeals to fix the nation's health care system.

A small group of physicians met at a Cancer Survivors Park Thursday to urge Congress to make meaningful changes to health care.

Dr. Kelvin Walls is an ENT doctor in Eastern Jackson County and says he's seen the need for an overhaul since the start of his career.

Walls: "I think as a physician, we've been talking about this for as a long as I've been in medicine, and that all goes back to even when we were training and looking at different programs, different types of systems, and now it's time for it to happen."

Walls also says doctors often provide care to people who can't pay so getting reimbursed a bit less for services would not be a big deal to him, as long as more people are actually covered. Some other area doctors say they're worried about legislation that would lower those payments - they say it could make it harder to practice medicine.

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