President Obama Pays House Call on AMA
EmailToday President Obama will fly to Chicago where he will address a convention of the American Medical Association and argue, according to a White House official “why health care reform that brings down costs can’t wait another year or another administration.” He will support a health insurance exchange where “private plans compete with a public option that drives down costs and expands choice. The President will be clear about what a public option does and doesn’t mean for patients, physicians, and our broader health care system.”
President Obama will “reiterate the core promise and principle of the reform effort: that if you like the health care you have, you can keep it, and that his focus will be on fixing what’s broken and building on what works,” the official says.
Mr. Obama will argue that “we’re spending too much money on treatments that don’t make Americans any healthier, and that our system equates more expensive core with better care. He’ll lay out his vision for a system that replicates best practices, incentivizes excellence, and closes cost disparities — and he’ll ask for our medical professionals’ help in getting the job done.”
One agenda item the president will touch on, likely not enough for his audience, is malpractice reform. In his May 11 meeting with leaders of the health care industry, the incoming president the AMA, Dr. James Rohack, told President Obama that one of the reasons health care costs are so high is because doctors order unnecessary tests, referrals, and hospital stays because they’re practicing “defense medicine” and fearing malpractice lawsuits.
“What we asked the president is that if we as physicians are willing to tackle the issue of looking at variation of care and reducing unnecessary tests, we also have to have protection in the courtroom,” Rohack told ABC News after the meeting, that “if we didn’t order a test, that we subsequently aren’t going to get sued because we didn’t order that test that shouldn’t have been done in the first place.”
So for example, not everyone who comes into the emergency room complaining about a headache would automatically get an MRI, Rohack said.
But what about the idea that these measures to save money could cost more lives?
That some people’s lives might be saved because of that MRI?
“I think we need to highlight that life is a matter of risk,” Dr. Rohack, a cardiologist, responded. “We know that 24 percent of Americans purchase tobacco products and use them every day knowing there’s a well documented risk of heart disease as well as cancer so life is a decision of choice. We have people who drink alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car and create a burden on our current American economy with trauma funds because of some of them being uninsured and still our government has said that any one who shows up to the emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay, the health care system has to take care of them.”
You can listen to our whole interview with Rohack from our ABC News Shuffle podcast interview HERE.
- jpt
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Well, at least if the audience throws any shoes at him.. they will be of a very high quality leather…
Posted by: DontGet818OnMeNow | June 15, 2009, 8:16 am 8:16 am
Obama will go to physicians and explain why they should accept a plan that will halve their fees while not reducing their liability risks one iota.
Let Obama fix Medicare first. let him prove that government can fix anything before dismantling the best medicine in the world.
Posted by: drjohn | June 15, 2009, 8:56 am 8:56 am
They say good medicine costs money. Unfortunately so does bad medicine. Physicians, Heal Thyselves.
Posted by: EdDoc80 | June 15, 2009, 9:04 am 9:04 am
You can always go to Nicaragua and save money on medicine.
Want to save money?
Stop providing medical care, especially cancer treatment, to illegals. Stop forcing docs to conduct every imaginable test lest some PI lawyer find one that was missed.
The truth is that Obamacare means rationing. It will mean waiting for an MRI for your child following a head injury. It will mean health care decisions are made by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. It will mean your parents won’t get the medical treatment they get now because it is not “efficient.” they will die 6-12 months sooner.
If they can’t fix Medicare, what makes anyone think they can fix this?
Posted by: drjohn | June 15, 2009, 9:20 am 9:20 am
Sounds like he’s ready to cave to the lobbyists…
Posted by: matt | June 15, 2009, 9:21 am 9:21 am
Less than 19% of physicians belong to the AMA. Their influence has been declining in recent years in part due to it becoming a symbol of corruption and greedy in our healthcare system. Many of the non-AMA doctors support a greater government role in healthcare, particularly single payer. Like most symbols, whose legitimacy resides primarily in perceptions – Obama’s speech serves only to re-enforce the power of this paper tiger. Healthcare reform needs the votes of only a majority in the House and Senate. Caving to the AMA and the insurance companies goes against last November’s mandate of the voters and is undemocratic.
Posted by: Mark from atlanta | June 15, 2009, 9:56 am 9:56 am
drjohn:”Stop providing medical care, especially cancer treatment, to illegals. ”
Would you to provide an actual figure on how much this would save? Or would that show up your strawman for the irrelevant bumpersticker slogan it is? I would suggest looking to the 2007 audit of Medicaid matching funds done by Bush for numbers – such as $4 million per year in NY for chemotherapy on illegal immigrants. That is only one state (a large one with a surprisingly large illegal population) but for perspective US healthcare spending in 2006 was $2 TRILLION, that is $2,000,000 million.
Perhaps consider debating the issues that actually account for a significant portion of the cost rather than just a good subject for the two minute hate.
Posted by: jhw539 | June 15, 2009, 10:18 am 10:18 am
I like the insurance but I have a company that makes it manitory to have policy to work for them and my wife has insurance on me to so I have two insurance company policys that cost in $600.00 month range i have to do this to work for my company whos insurance am i paying for. I don’t use my insurance cause its co-pay is to costly and my wifes is so much better
Posted by: Donald | June 15, 2009, 11:32 am 11:32 am
Thanks for the link to your interview with the doctor, Jake. Interesting and distubing. Good questions and thoughtful investigation.
Some of the things I find disturbing.
1. Changing the health care sector into a system.
2. Doctors giving up any of their autonomy.
3. Health records being put into a national database (loss of privacy).
4. A slide into a one payer system where there is no private alternative.
5. Institutionalized preventative care that mandates nutrition and exercise. (think on how unworkable wasteful and expensive the government will make this.)
I agree that it is very sad to see so many obese children/adults. I would like to see children outside playing and not cooped inside with media/games/twitter/etc.
But, I am more concerned to see the camel put it’s nose into the tent and then push the owner out of the tent. We could very well lose the best health care on the planet. [Ask Obama about his latest visitor, Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), who chose to come to the USA in 2006 (Ohio), to have his heart problems treated.]
As an older citizen, I am more concerned about losing our private freedoms than trying to fix everyone by allowing the goverment to become a nanny state. I could probably write a few reams on how the nannying/victim mentality is destroying our children/nation, but I’ll end with a couple of quotes that I hope you will consider and think on what these men meant:
“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.” – G. K. Chesterton (1920′s)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” – C.S. Lewis (1950′s)
Posted by: Ordinary Sadie | June 15, 2009, 6:21 pm 6:21 pm
When we voted for change last November, it did not mean that we voted for the government to be our parents.
The AMA know far better than the President what is wrong with health care. Perhaps it would be best if Obama listened to them rather than to preach to them.
Posted by: Jon F | June 16, 2009, 5:59 am 5:59 am
IVE GOT A STORY FOR YOU JPT>>> EMAIL ME AND YOU WILL BE NATION WIDE>>> I”VE GOT IDEAS FOR OUR PRESIDENT HEALTH REFORM!!! BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE!
Posted by: VRamos | June 19, 2009, 11:25 pm 11:25 pm