Posted on 03/28/2010 7:40:14 AM PDT by deport
WASHINGTON – At any point in the yearlong odyssey that yielded the health care law that passed this week, physicians could have overwhelmed the effort with opposition.
The traditionally conservative American Medical Association helped kill President Bill Clinton's health care effort in the 1990s. Three decades earlier, it opposed Medicare as "the beginning of socialized medicine."
But this time, the nation's largest physicians' organization was loyal to the overhaul, helping to keep nervous Democrats behind the historic and controversial legislation. At the helm of the opinionated doctors' group: J. James Rohack, a Texas cardiologist who decided long ago that the country's inefficient health care system couldn't fix itself.
"It was going to require a federal intervention to balance the market and make it a better system," Rohack said in an interview this week. "At the end of the day, Congress took a step in the right direction. But it's not the final step."
.....
"Doctors are the ones who really have kind of an empty briefcase right now," said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, an obstetrician and AMA member who has known Rohack for years.
"The insurance companies, for all the drubbing they've taken from the Democrats, they are in pretty darn good shape right now," Burgess said. "Their stock was through the roof the day after we passed this bill."
......
Nonetheless, many other medical groups, most of which belong to the AMA, opposed the law. The Texas Medical Association, which Rohack once led, called it "bad medicine for patients."
......
The law improves coverage through an expansion of Medicaid and new tax credits to buy private insurance beginning in 2014. It also boosts payments for family-practice doctors who treat low-income Medicaid patients.
end snips
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
There were doctor groups that opposed the bill?
Coulda fooled me!
When the **** hits the fan the AMA better keep its mouth shut and it should not be surprised it caught something sleeping with the Democrats.
The AMA represents about 15% of physicians. And they made a lot of docs mad--sort of like AARP. Does the fact that AARP came out for HC mean everyone over 55 supports HC?
Most of the problems with the current health care system are attributable to government fixes.
NYTs Doctors’ Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan Published: June 10, 2009 WASHINGTON — As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system. ... ... While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be “provided through private markets, as they are currently.
yes lots of them but they didn’t get the MSM coverage and they weren’t the sell out AMA. The AMA quit being the place to go for MDs some time ago
The doctors I work with hate the AMA, don’t belong to it and say they have no voice or representation through this organization.
Good point!
Yeah, like all the IDIOTS who voted for this socialist fool in the white house, who was elected after listening to an american HATER for 20 yrs, married to an american HATER for umpteen yrs, friend of an american terrorist, etc...
I am SICK of these oops! after the deed is done...
NO QUARTER, NO MERCY, NO AMNESTY, NO FORGIVENESS!!!!!
(Sorry - on a caffeine high this AM)
Bull! Most practicing physicians don't belong to the AMA. Lots of the membership is students and retirees.
Doctors’ Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan
Published: June 10, 2009
Yep, that’s just about the time this Doctor took over the leadership role of the AMA. His term expires this June, 2010. He got some backroom deals such as the following alluded to in the article:
....Rohack responds that he got a commitment from House and Senate leaders to fix the Medicare payment system separately. .....
Yep, that's the so-called "doctor fix".
Watch out for Burgess.
For the past 6-8 months I have been e-mailing with his aides.
He is one of the main pushers of Electronic Medical Records data bank. I have been arguing that this will result in unprecedented intrusion of Americans Medical Privacy.
Pay attention folks.
This horse has left the barn.
It’s their call whether to support or oppose the bill - and they have to live with the results...and they may not like those results.
As I see it, once the US is gone as a safety valve for doctors hoping to make a good living, and medicine is totally monopolized by governments, it becomes reasonable for those governments to do something about what they will see as “excess incomes”, such the guys controlling anesthetic making something like $300k (average), not to mention surgeons.
They may think that their years of torture and huge debt to become a doctor makes those high salaries worth it...but the government does not have to agree - and they HAVE NO WHERE TO TURN when that happens. They cannot run to Canada, or Europe, and demand those salaries - and Canada (which still pays fairly well) will turn the screws now, since they also don’t have to worry about losing any more doctors to the US anymore.
All I can say is that there is NO WAY that I want my kids to grow up to be doctors. Lawyers maybe, crane operators, welders...but not doctors - it’s a losing cause.
Yep and may roam for a long time before it is brought under control again.
“Yep, that’s the so-called “doctor fix”.
More precisely, the “doc fix” without which health care reform never would have passed, yet whose $208 billion cost was mendaciously left out of the cost estimates for the health care reform bill.
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/5327-medicare-doc-fix-increases-cost-of-obamacare-causes-deficits
Part of the reason the public is so angry about this new law is because it shredded any pretense that the Democrat rulers in Washington are even trying to be honest with the American public. These truth-twisters will bend every rule and cherry-pick the evidence in their ruthless pursuit of a leftist agenda that is deeply offensive to a center-right nation.
We have the same saying at the Wastewater plant.
It's mainly made up of "educators" or "academics" who don't want to see patients but like to sit around and mentally j#rk off about how things should be... on a salary.
Kinda like business groups that "support" the president. This is all bull. Out of our group of 13 ER docs there is one from Cali that voted for Obamalamadingdong. His wife works for the IRS. Just perfect. He was surprised by the stuff in the bill. dumba##.
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