Posted on 04/12/2008 8:14:00 AM PDT by lowbridge
Sixty Per Cent of Physicians Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan
Written by Cisco
Monday, 07 April 2008
With apologies to the leftist anti-war crowd, I will steal and bastardize one of their favorite mantras: “Ackerman lied, health care freedom died.” Now that I have said it, I have to admit that it does not have all of the fluidity of the anti-war slogans. Maybe that is because “Ackerman” has three syllables and “Bush” has just one. Or maybe that is because you need to be a brainless leftist in order to construct a really enjoyable brainless slogan that can be chanted ad nauseam at rallies where people are not expected to do any critical thinking.
While I must admit that I have failed in my first effort at creating a moronic slogan, I will simultaneously claim success at revealing the duplicity of Drs. Ronald T. Ackerman and Aaron E. Carroll. You may have recently heard the breathless reporting concerning a recent survey of physicians in which they were purportedly asked if they favored a switch to a national health care plan. The story was first reported by Reuters on March 31st and was subsequently picked up by all of the major news media. The leading line of the Reuters story is “More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan,” and that line has been faithfully repeated by every medium from MSNBC to ScienceDaily. Dr. Ackerman and Dr. Carroll are the authors of the Annals of Internal Medicine article and the survey upon which the Reuters report is supposedly based, and it is apparent that both Ackerman and Carroll are quite satisfied with this oft-repeated Reuters report even though their survey never actually asked the physicians if they favored switching to a national health care plan.
My first reaction upon hearing the story was to question why anybody would care about the results of such an absurd survey of physicians. The opinion of the physician in this discussion is only important inasmuch as the physician is a taxpayer just like me. If anything, the physician's opinion should be discounted in this discussion because the physician has a vested interest and his opinion is biased. In a democracy, public policy is decided by the body politic as a whole, not by an oligarchy of egotistical , spoiled brats who just happen to have the letters “M” and “D” after their names. I am certain that if I were to survey a large number of Internet bloggers and ask them if they would be interested in guaranteed government payments for their work regardless of the quality of the drivel that they slung into cyberspace, a large percentage of them would express a great deal of interest.
As often happens, my second reaction followed my first reaction, and my second reaction to the reports of this survey was that someone, somewhere was lying. Nothing in my twenty years of experience working with hundreds of physicians from all parts of the country and all parts of the world would lead me to believe that a majority of United States physicians would favor switching to a national health care plan. My second reaction was validated by my research and I discovered that the someone who is lying is actually two people: the duplicitous Dr. Ackerman and the duplicitous Dr. Carroll.
In order to fully understand the duplicity of these two confidence men with degrees, one should first know that the current physician survey upon which the Reuters report is based is the second such survey conducted by the esteemed doctors. One of the stated objectives of the current survey is “To determine whether physician opinion has changed in the 5 years since the 2002 survey.” Indeed, some media reports went so far as to say that Ackerman's and Carroll's two surveys indicated that 80,000 physicians had changed their minds about switching to a national health care plan in the past five years. Drs. Ackerman and Carroll need to answer a pressing question: How can they legitimately compare the results of the two surveys when they did not ask the same questions in both surveys?
In the first physician survey that the lying doctors conducted in 2002, the results of which were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, they asked physicians two questions: 1.) In principle, do you support or oppose governmental legislation to establish national health insurance? and 2.) Do you support or oppose a national health insurance plan where all health care is paid for by the federal government? (Note: The underlines under the words “paid for” are actually on the questionnaire and not added by me) In the 2007 survey the first question was identical, but the second question was changed drastically to “Do you support achieving universal coverage through more incremental reform?” The survey questions are dramatically different, and yet Ackerman and Carroll want to compare their results. I can only surmise that the doctors were allowed a special dispensation by all of the scientists and the mathematicians of the world and were permitted to temporarily suspend the axioms of logic that we were all taught in elementary school, and that now the two of them can confidently compare apples and oranges and declare them to be identical.
Of greater significance than the illogical comparison between the two surveys is the actual motivation behind the change of question two. Ackerman and Carroll were apparently unhappy with the responses to question two in the first survey. In responding to the question “Do you support or oppose a national health insurance plan where all health care is paid for by the federal government?” 60 percent of the responding physicians opposed the idea, with 33 percent strongly opposing it and 27 percent generally opposing it. Only 26 percent of the respondents supported the idea of health care being paid for by the federal government.
I am certain that Ackerman and Carroll were astounded by the negative responses to question two in the 2002 survey, and it is easy to understand why. I have searched high and low and far and wide, and I can find absolutely no record of these two having ever practiced medicine. They may have had physician practices at one time, but if they did, it was a long time ago. Our two con-men are merely academicians and not real doctors. As academicians, Ackerman and Carroll are surrounded by numerous other academicians, i.e., people who do not live in the real world. As academicians, Ackerman and Carroll fell into the trap of believing that all intelligent people, i.e., doctors, would believe the same socialistic garbage that they and their colleagues preach to their students every day at Indiana University. So in order to avoid such a negative response to a survey that is clearly designed to convince the unwashed masses that government-controlled health care is wanted by their physicians, our fine doctors did what any good propaganda minister would do: They changed the question.
Changing question two on the survey was not the only effort at deception in the survey and the resulting Reuters report. The Reuters report, with the tacit approval of Quackerman (I just had to change his name – it is such an easy target) and partner, reported that more than half of U.S. physicians favored “switching” to a national health care plan. But no where in the survey were the doctors actually asked if they favored switching. The question that is asked of the physicians in both the 2002 and the 2007 survey is “Do you support or oppose legislation to establish national health insurance?” The doctors who stated that they supported such legislation could have varying ideas about the scope and funding of the theoretical national health insurance. They may have been merely supporting a change from the various state-run Medicaid programs to a similar federally-run program. They may have been expressing a mere sentiment that all children should have health insurance. Because of the broad nature of the question, we can not be certain of the opinions of the respondents. But the results of the 2002 survey provide us with absolute certainty that the physicians were not expressing support for switching to a federally-funded national health insurance plan, because when they were asked specifically if they supported such a switch, 60 percent of the physicians opposed it.
Quackerman and Carroll, in an effort to deceive, asked a very broad question in their survey and then, with the complicity of Reuters, reported it as though they had asked a very specific question. If Quackerman and Carroll really wanted to know the opinion of the surveyed physicians, they could have asked the following question: “Do you support or oppose legislation to eliminate all HMOs, PPOs, and for-profit health insurance companies and to force all citizens to switch to a federally-funded health insurance?” If such a question were asked, then maybe the results of the survey would be of some value.
Because the bias of the two socialist survey-takers is so blatantly obvious, one begins to question not only the validity of the survey questions themselves, but the methods employed in taking the survey. For example, I question why Quackerman and Carroll decided to throw out the 197 surveys completed by physicians who are no longer in practice. Are we to believe that the opinion of a retired surgeon is of no value in this survey? If the non-practicing physician's opinion has no value in this discussion, then why are we listening to Quackerman and Carroll about anything? Additionally, I would love to hear from any trained statistician who could take a look at the survey results and make a determination as to whether the numbers that the socialists provide in their article might be manipulated. Do the numbers fall into the “95% confidence, 2% margin of error” category just a little bit too neatly? I do not know whether they do or not, but I am very suspicious of anything that these two propagandists might do.
We can all agree that we are facing many monumental challenges concerning funding our health care system in the United States. We can also agree that the free flow of valid ideas and facts will assist us in meeting the coming challenges. I am even willing to listen to ideas presented by two socialist professors from Indiana University. But we must always be careful to separate the valid ideas from the propaganda. Quackerman and Carroll should go sell their socialistic propaganda elsewhere. The American average Joe is not buying it.
I have attached the PDF files for both the 2003 Annal article and the 2008 Annals article for everyone's review.
I’m in healthcare and talked about this with physicians all week long - both primary care and specialists. All laughed out loud at the survey and knew it was a lie from the start.
Another example of how the MSM treats the American public as fools.
That’s because they’ve seen the stuff going on in places like the UK.
Get this, they have a new rule that forces doctors to see patients coming into the ER in less than 4 hours.
The ER response?
Make the patients stay in the ambulance until there is an available doc.
More government always fixes things. sarc/off
More lying leftist bull!
“you need to be a brainless leftist in order to construct a really enjoyable brainless slogan”
hahahaha. That quote is priceless!!
The author (and anybody else) may use my tagline to make the point.
“new rule that forces doctors to see patients coming into the ER in less than 4 hours.”
My wife works in the ER. True many people wait for hours and hours. That is the primary complaint. It is called triage. Chest pains always trump a runny nose or a headache.
Wife says people get up and walk out after waiting so long. Guess it wasn’t such an emergency after all.
Why would Physicians want to switch to Nationalize Health Care? It would mean them having less control over how they deliver their services. It still amazes me how the same bad solutions which have only worked to increase the cost of Health Care are still being pushed as solutions. Health care cost has only increased as Health Insurance became prevalent and government played a larger role in it. So do we really want more of the same only vastly expanded? Is that really the problem? Do we not have enough people insured, is the Government not already far to involved in medicine and largely responsible for fouling it up? People see how inept bureaucracy is and still run to it like heroin addicts needing a fix. Do we not already have enough middle men taking a cut in Health Care? I am so tired of the conventional wisdom on this issue because it is so wrong and only fit for the minds of simpletons.
Now if we can get 60% of voters to understand why Nat. H. C. is the worst thing we can do for Health Care...
In health care, there is the triple whammy of increased requirements for treatment, the possibility of a lawsuit, and the obligation to treat regardless of the ability to pay. While many blame all of this on illegals, I know of a single wino who has a standing bill of over $1 million at a hospital. He gets taken to ER, goes to rehab, spends thirty days at a detox center, gets out, drinks until he's found passed out in the gutter, goes to the ER, etc. Of course, he will never pay the bill, so the price goes up for everyone with insurance to cover him.
Taking everything you wrote into account, the scariest thing is that there are LESS THAN ONE MILLION licensed physicians in this country.
There are over 300 MILLION of us.
Do the math.
If healthcare suddenly becomes “free” and “accessible to anyone - anytime”, then there will be NO HEALTHCARE FOR ANYONE.
It really depends on who you ask.
Academic physicians, centered around major university-based health care systems, probably would favor Universal Health Care as a significant proportion of their patients are indigent...and University populations tend to be pretty liberal in poitical philosophy. You might get 60% of these physicians to say they favor Universal Health Care.
But most mainline community physicians are vehemently opposed to a ‘national’ system. We discuss this all the time, and I can tell you that one immediate consequence of nationalizing the health care system would be the retirement of a significant number of ‘older’ physicians who already have the ability to retire. There is also another set of physicians, such as myself, who are close to retirement but not quite there yet, who would immediately take non-call, stable hours jobs just to get by.
Nationalizing health care and taking over the careers of Physicians, RN’s, ancillary health care workers and the facilites they practice in by governmental decree will not be without significant consequences.
The best way to argue with a liberal against National Health Care is this; ask them if they favor the Patriot Act. Get them all wound up about Pres. Bush violating their civil liberties by listening to phone calls. Once you’ve got them going, tell them that by nationalizing health care, the federal gov’t will have full access to ALL OF YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS. So now, the feds know everything about your finances through your tax returns, and everything there is to know about your medical history. See if they think that’s a violation of your civil liberties.
PS. If they really are liberals, when they realize you have them, they’ll start yelling and screaming that it’s all Bush’s fault anyway and we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq in the first place, that its all about oil..........
(you know the rest).
1. Most physicians in the US do not want British or Canadian-style national health care, period. On the other hand, speaking as a physician, the vast majority of physicians I know and associate with want everyone to have access to the care they need. If asked if they favor extending coverage or assisting people somehow most physicians are going to say yes, of course.
2. Whereas academic medicine has traditionally had great physicians and scientists, over the past several years this has been changing such that the quality of actual practitioners in academics has declined relative to the community. This is not universally true, but is definitely true in many places. Academic institutions are now full of ‘physicians’ who don't really see patients but who hold degrees in epidemiology and public health and spend most of their time doing statistical research and making proclamations about how physicians who actually see patients should practice. These are not the physicians you would want taking care of you when you are seriously ill. When it comes to public health care etc. their opinions are informed only by the databases they have access to, and not by real-life in the trenches experience. Therefore, what they have to say should be taken with a grain of salt. Ironically, these physicians tend to have access to the media. Many therefore have some degree of ‘fame’, and so the public actually think they must be ‘great’ doctors.
3. Some medical organizations, (e.g. the American College of Physicians that sponsors the Annals of Internal Medicine in which this survey was published), are very, very politically oriented and do not speak for the average physician. Like Congress and every other bureaucratic entity these organizations tend to be headed by people who have little hands-on experience and who don't do much but go to meetings and dinners. These are not the kinds of people who should be making decisions about what needs to be done with something as important as health care. I would not let many of these people take care of a squirrel and find it tragically amusing that they have any credibility at all in matters of medicine.
4. Life is complex, and many aspects of society are complex, including the economy and health care. Solutions too should be expected to be complex. A ‘one size fits all’ type of socialized medicine approach is really short-sighted and won't be capable of adjusting to these complexities. We should be looking for innovative and dynamic solutions, not copying the tired ill-conceived and largely failing ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches that have been tried elsewhere.
Sorry for the long post.
Back when HMO’s were first being tried, I was involved with a clinic that started seeing patients on a “capitated” basis. This meant that, for a flat rate per month per person (the capitation) paid by an insurance company, we would see their clients at no additional charge...no copay required.
It was a disaster. People would drop in anytime as we also had 24 hour walk in Urgent Care, for any reason and expect to be seen for the most minor of questions, actually curiosities. We were desperate for a solution and it was finally agreed that we could ask for a $5 copay.
The effect was amazing. Patient visits dropped by over 60%. The simple act of pulling $5 out of their own pocket would discourage people from coming.
The copay was still too low and utilization too high so we dropped capitated plans eventually.
It was an educational experience in human nature and “free” healthcare.
Mrs.Z, you are absolutely right. Free healthcare means NO healthcare.
Now if we can get 60% of voters to understand why Nat. H. C. is the worst thing we can do for Health Care”
Why would I want my health care to depend upon the same people who deliver/handle the mail?
I sent a poster in a tube from N Nevada to S Montana first class- $3.00.
It took 15 days to get there, and all I got was deer in the headlights looks when I informed them at the local PO that I wasn’t happy. It had been a birthday present for a little boy, and it was late...Should have taken no more than 4 days.
Those of you in the healthcare field need to be screaming your stories.
Unfortunately, even if McCain wins, the down ticket races could possibly be largely dim.
I wonder if McCain will have the courage to veto the inevitable insanity.
It is probably a lot closer to 90% if you poll all physicians and not just the liberals.
Long post, but the gist of it seems to be that the issue is complicated.
IMHO government at any level does not do “complicated” very well.
“IMHO government at any level does not do “complicated” very well.”
I absolutely agree. More generically, bureaucracies of any type don’t do ‘complicated’ very well.
I know of few people so cold-hearted that they would say you shouldn't provide surgery for a broken hip to someone who broke their hip and couldn't pay for it. However, for some reason, this extrapolates to people going to quack chiropractors twice a week for $400 fifteen minute "electrical stimulation" treatments. Psychiatrists can also start a running tab that goes forever. Some patients doctor hop for pills. I know of many who go to the doctor because they're lonely and nobody else will pay any attention to them. There are others with chronic conditions that are extremely expensive to treat, but with treatment the person can have a long productive life. There are others that have a condition that will likely kill them, and $10 million dollars in treatment will give them a 15% chance of living another two years, hooked up to tubes the entire time. Patients like Chrisopher Reeve needed 24 hour care by multiple people.
It's a very tough issue, and not amenable to a fifteen minute stump speech.
I absolutely agree. More generically, bureaucracies of any type don’t do ‘complicated’ very well.
No, but they make simple things complicated, and complicated things impossible.
I also asked around our hospital’s doctor’s lounge. And yes there is some support for universal health care coverage. Not surprisingly the great majority of those answering yes would be generously grouped under the “less than stellar performing docs “ Twenty years ago the group would remind me of those docs that finished their residencies and immediately gravitated towards working for groups like Kaiser. In those days Kaiser attracted an inordinate amount of guys that couldn’t make it in private practice and gravitated toward the promise of a steady income rather than an income dependent on the quality of their work.
In addition my informal poll showed that docs just out of their residency were much more likely to go for universal payer. They were also more likely to want to work shorter hours, be least accessible after hours and work in large group practices.
Only 60%?
Has anyone checked on Ackerman’s or Carroll’s political contributions? My intuitive guess is that they are big-time Democrats.
This post (<-click), while addressing a tax-related thread, explains in more detail why federal politicians, like Clinton and Obama who are now encouraging national health care, are actually in contempt of the Constitution where constitutionally unauthorized federal spending is concerned, a consequence of FDR's dirty politics.
In fact, consider that when Jefferson reflected on the Founder's division of federal and state powers, he noted that the Founders had trusted the states, not the federal government, with the care of people.
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, (emphasized by Amendment10) our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262 http://tinyurl.com/onx4jBut also note that the people can always exercise their Article V powers to amend the Constitution to properly authorize the feds to manage health care. Until such a time, however, health care remains a state power issue.
The people need to reconnect with the Founder's division of federal and state government powers as reflected in the Constitution, particularly by the now ignored 10th Amendment. The people then need to wise up to the major problem that the federal government hasn't been operating with the restraints of the Constitution since the days of FDR's dirty politics. The bottom line is that the people need to quit sitting on their hands and vote out of office big-shot federal spenders who are not upholding their oaths to defend the Constitution.
I knew that there was something fishy about that survey when I read it. I do know many younger people have been brainwashed into beleiving that National Health Care is needed, and they may now be filtering in to medical schools. And of course academics who see none or relatively few patients and get a salary not related to patient volume and fee schedule would probably get the same salary and don’t care.
Someone I heard, perhaps a talk show host, said that “Mein Kampf” outlined the first National Health Care program. Does anyone know if that is true? If true, it’s also a good emotional argument against it, since people in favor of National Health Care respond to emotional and not logical arguments anyway.
Finally, the following saying also applies to doctors. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach make public policy on the subject.
Jefferson was explaining that the Constitution assigned "to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom." In that context, "the care of our persons" did not refer to medical care, but rather referred mainly to protection of individuals against certain circumstances perpetrated externally by others. He was referring to police and state militia power, maintained by each state to protect persons angainst physical harm caused by crime within a state's borders. He hadn't - fortunately - the vaguest notion of citizens relying on state government for medical care. For that, citizens traditionally relied on themselves and their friends and families, and, perhaps, private charities.
The Tenth Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
While I certainly agree that the Tenth Amendment's major purpose to to confine the powers of the federal government to those enumerated in the Constitution, it certainly does not give state governments carte blanche power over their citizens regarding those subjects not assigned to the federal government. If you read the Amendment, it says that such powers are reserved "to the States respectively" OR "to the people." THE PEOPLE are mentioned on an equal footing to THE STATES. And the Amendment clearly recognizes that The Constitution prohibits certain powers to the States (although it is not explicit as to what the prohibited powers are).
When you say "...health care remains a state power issue," I would have to disagree. Citizens have a general privacy right to treat their bodies as they choose (and concommitantly, to pay for it as they choose).
No, the first national health care program was instituted by Bismarck in Germany in the late 1800s - hardly a liberty-oriented society. I believe it has continually survived in some form or another in Germany until now.
Jefferson was explaining that the Constitution assigned "to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom." In that context, "the care of our persons" did not refer to medical care, but rather referred mainly to protection of individuals against certain circumstances perpetrated externally by others.No, the Jefferson excerpt obviously doesn't specify the kinds of care.
But with the exception of military health care that is reasonably associated Congress's responsibility to maintain the armed forces, given that the federal Constitution says nothing about health care, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to address health care to the states. The fact that Jefferson mentioned that the Founders trusted the states with the care of people in general helps to substantiate the 10th A. protected power of the states to address health care.
While I certainly agree that the Tenth Amendment's major purpose to to confine the powers of the federal government to those enumerated in the Constitution, it certainly does not give state governments carte blanche power over their citizens regarding those subjects not assigned to the federal government.Oops! No, the 10th A. wasn't intended to give the states carte blanche power over citizens. But you are overlooking that the honest interpretation of the 14th A. protects people from the abuse of 10th A. protected state powers.
When you say "...health care remains a state power issue," I would have to disagree. Citizens have a general privacy right to treat their bodies as they choose (and concommitantly, to pay for it as they choose).I will clarify my statement. By saying that health care remains a state power issue, I mean that it is up to the people to work with their state's lawmakers to decide the extent of their state's involvement, if any, in health care issues.
And if the Article V majority of states ultimately decide that they can't make their various health care programs work, then they can optionally exercise their Article V muscle to amend the federal Constitution to properly authorize the feds to give it a crack.
The enumeration in the Contitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the poeople.
One could argue that control over one's body and the care or lack thereof it receives is a private area that government should not intrude upon at all. I would think that if you asked Madison at the time of the First Congress if unenumerated rights included the right to choose what health care you wanted and how to pay for it, he would have answered "Yes" emphatically (with the possible exception of certain government workers). If you agree that all Bill of Rights protections against the federal government are extended to protections against the states via the 14th Amendment (with which the SCOTUS has generally agreed), you would have to conclude that the Ninth Amendment's protection of privacy in one's own body and how one treats it (as an unemumerated federal right) also protects against abuses of this right by state governments.
I am concerned about your approach of open bargaining of citizens with their state legislatures on matters as personal as this. Once a state government gets into this (as all have done already to some extent or another), its role grows and grows with no constitutional boundaries, at least none that courts are courageous to enforce upon them. There seems to be no line now between "public health" (which is the catch-all phrase to justify state involvement) and individual health and the individual's right to decide how to care for his body and how to finance it.
Of course it is a 'tough issue'...which is precisely why the government ought to let the impartial market deal with it, rather than them taking control of it.
The people clamoring for universal health care for all are actually clamoring for two things, not one. True, they want universal coverage, but they also want that coverage for less than market value...which is obtainable at this point only through government fiat.
If the government wanted to negotiate with physicians for market rates for their services, and give physicians an option for participating or not, perhaps physicians wouldn't be so opposed to the idea of government provided universal care; but if present day Medicare/Medicaid is any indication, this is not what the government has in mind.
The fact that health care is so important to individuals is the very reason why they should be opposed to the government controlling the medical field which will not end well.
Why do we as a people spend so much money on health care? Because we don't think it's important? Of course not.
The provision of health care costs money all around. It costs money to develop new drug treatments. It cost money to develop and produce technology. It costs money and time/effort to get the training necessary for the individuals to practice. Just because the masses or the government demands the provision of health care for 'less' doesn't change the costs involved.
Getting back to your original point, that it is a 'tough issue', it is only such if you are trying to find a way to get that service for everyone for less than it costs.
I know this has been posted before as it's own 'topic', but it should be encouraged reading for all:
But let's not confuse that with the individual citizen's right to choose what care he will receive, who will give the care, and how that care will be financed.
The government controlling health care will restrict everyone's rights
from the physicians to obtain market value for their services to patients to get whatever care they desire from whomever they want for however they want to pay for it.
It's a lose-lose all around.
That’s why we are Conservatives. There needs to be a huge amount of House and Senate cleaning and a restart of the campaigning with all new players. How did we ever get in the quagmire? God help us. Get the damn government out of everything but the military. Demand they build and keep a strong military - period.
It might work.
It might work.
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