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September 7, 2009
Hypocritical vs. Hippocratic in Health Care Debate
By Daniel Tilson
Physicians for and against health reform are using different tactics to win hearts and minds.
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The 75 percent or more of Americans who support health reform with a public option have more to worry about than the Health Insurance and Drug companies, the lobbyists, politicians and "advocacy organizations" fronting for them, and the frightened, misinformed citizens manipulated into being anti-reform protesters.
Turns out that doctors may be having more of an impact on this whole national debate than we realize. Here in Florida, as is true around the country, many physicians who oppose President Obama's vision of health reform with a public option are taking their case directly to their own patients -- often right in the middle of examinations and consultations.
You know how it goes, probably something like, "Okay, Mary, it's just a mild Flu, so take two aspirin, drink plenty of liquids, and tell Congress to say No to Obamacare".
Some docs and medical practices are using good old-fashioned direct mail marketing to spread their distortions and disinformation. As reported recently in a recent Huffington Post article, "In July, the Southwest Internal Medicine Specialists in Orlando, Fla. sent a letter that said some of the proposed reforms ‘will harm American taxpayers and directly interfere with your healthcare'." That mailing went on to encourage patients to get involved and lobby actively against reform efforts. And it comes as no surprise that so many of the targets of this unique version of medical "malpractice" happen to be Senior Citizens.
But let's wait until next time to delve further into the big Health Reform Fear & Smear campaign aimed specifically at the elderly.
For now, let's all resolve to preventively inoculate Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad and elderly friends and neighbors against this kind of very personalized fear mongering. Let's arm them with the truth, about how health reform will in fact helpprotect them, and Medicare.
And equally important is to remind them, and ourselves, that we have the right, and the responsibility, really, to tell any family physician that peddles any such unsolicited propaganda to cut it out and go join the Tea-baggers.
The truth is that the American Medical Association itself has come out in favor of health reform. Hundreds of thousands of physicians, nurses and other health care providers have gone public in support of health reform. We cannot let the manipulative rotten apples in the profession succeed in creating any impression in anyone's mind that health reform will hurt them.
Last point, but in now way the least, is that there are of course many thousands of doctors out there -- on both sides of the issue, I trust -- who do know how to separate their doctoring duties from their political beliefs and activism. For I am not suggesting that the medical community should stay out of the debate, rather, that they should have the professionalism not to insinuate that debate into the midst of the doctor-patient relationship.
And for an example of a physician that understands and respects those boundaries and is still making time to fight hard for real health reform in an honest, open way, please take a look at the 1-minute video below. It features Dr. George Bahadue, a member of the 13,000-strong national pro-reform, grassroots organization, Doctors For America.
If you will, listen to the Good Doctor for a minute.