Posted on 08/18/2009 12:25:17 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
By embracing ObamaCare, the American Medical Association could set off a civil war among members.
James Klemis, an interventional cardiologist who practices in Memphis, was at a lake house on a Saturday earlier this month when he got a text message from a friend about a health care town meeting that evening. He jumped in his car and drove 45 minutes to an inner-city auditorium. There he met up with 15 of his doctor colleagues, who all showed up to give their congressman, Steve Cohen, an earful.
"It's a very poorly crafted plan that's being rushed through," Klemis says, who spoke out against what he called socialized medicine at the event.
Doctors like Klemis are organizing against ObamaCare all over the country. Yet it's without the support of the biggest national doctors lobby, the American Medical Association. Within two days of the House passing its health bill through the Energy and Commerce Committee in late July, the AMA gave the President a rare bit of good news by endorsing the bill.
It was a shock to many of the group's 250,000 doctor members. The bill contains a vigorous new public health plan for people under the age of 65. The Lewin Group, a research organization owned by UnitedHealth (UNH), estimates that the legislation would cause somewhere between 34 million and 85 million people to go from having private to government insurance and would pay doctors on average 14% less than private HMOs. This weekend, there were reports that the White House is floating the idea of reform without a public plan, though all the bills that have made it through committee contain one.
Just like the AARP has had to backtrack in its support of ObamaCare since it became clear that many older people fear they will lose Medicare benefits,
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
PING
A broken, oversized Medicare and Medicaid system will not benefit by expansion or absorption into an even larger program with the US facing an increasingly advancing reduction in its state and federal tax bases as far as the eye can see. Buyers may not be coming back for a couple of decades, and, inventory will rot in the meantime. Consumer spending is dead and there is no replacement for it as the middle class cannot borrow anymore, with decreasing collateral by the second, as the greatest wealth transfer in history progresses. It is not the time to expand, thru taxes or borrowed money, already insolvent programs. Necessary adjustments are not possible for a system that is not currently sustained. The programs must be reduced without adding tax burdens. Borrowing money to expand any govt. programs defeats credit availability necessary for an eventual middle class and small business turnaround in the face of no prospect of needed, timely increased energy production, etc. Obamas’ agenda anticipates, mandates reductions in energy consumption, and this strangles any recovery possibilities in and of itself. More energy must be burned than is being burned now to effect an increase in GDP. None of the Obama agenda items offer the possibility of recovery. No rescued, propped up banking system generates wealth or recovery. Banks at the moment are NOT making money. Bank assets and liabilities are not correctly disclosed. “Green” agenda requires more money to be borrowed for an inadequate return in the moderate and long term. At present, for every $5 borrowed (T-bills,Fannie and Freddie Agency Bonds), only $1 is added to GDP as a result...any more bubble creation from this point forward will yield even less result. We hit a negative return based on borrowing some time ago.
None of the Obama agenda is financially competent, and, frankly is designed to hide the current financial status of its financial institutions even as govt. institutions vacuum up private and property mortgages for redistribution socialist style and an unfolding shift to offer ‘renting’in housing developments (we have produced a lot of ghettos already with such programs) for the public instead preserving a private ownership society. The world has seen how this has worked for most of the last century. Why a political party in this country wishes to implement failed models is beyond me.
It is beyond me too. When Russia imploded, I thought finally everyone can see that communist, and socialist solutions don’t work.
But our government seems to be “hell bent for leather” or maybe I should say determined to go 90 miles an hour down a dead end road.
That is the best explanation I've heard on why this attempt at socializing everything won't work. We will implode if much of it gets passed.
Only about 20% of the nation’s physicians are members of the AMA. It by no means speaks for physicians as a whole, despite the fact that it is made to seem as if it does.
Lib types weasel their way into the leadership of so many organizations. Members need to do a better job of making sure who they are voting for.
Paraphrasing; But, the ruskies and every other socialist government didn’t do it right so we have to be the ones to show them how to do it.
Honestly, this is the mindset of the left in that nobody can run your life or your country better than they can. They just can’t get past the idea that we don’t need them to take care of us.
Medicare will raise reimbursement rates? Really? Amid all the talk of Medicare bankruptcy, cutting programs, paying flat fees for a course of treatment, and "no-increase-in-net-expenditures?"
Palestrant accuses the AMA of being more concerned with keeping its seat at the White House table so it can protect its various ancillary moneymakers, like its estimated $75 million business licensing procedure codes to HMOs.
Ah, that makes more sense. Throw doctors under the bus so that "the firm" may prosper.
The AMA and AARP may just find that mindlessly supporting liberal policies for all these years might make the board members happy, but it doesn’t make the regular members happy.
I think this is a situation that both organizations have just followed the Democrat line for so long, they didn’t realize they had stepped over the line with this one.
That’s because the snobby ‘intellectuals’ of this country think it’s not the SYSTEM that failed, it’s just that the right PEOPLE didn’t do it correctly.
That’s the downfall of having academia deciding real world principles.
“That’s because the snobby ‘intellectuals’ of this country think it’s not the SYSTEM that failed, it’s just that the right PEOPLE didn’t do it correctly.
That’s the downfall of having academia deciding real world principles.”
I agree.
I spoke with one of my doctors about Obamacare and he told me he had already stopped paying his AMA dues.
Got a source for that quote? I really like it.
yet another bookmark
This is no surprise. There is a reason most docs do not belong to the AMA. The ones who do have a decidedly leftist bent.
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