Thursday, December 22, 2011 – Medicine and Politics in America by Adam Frederic Dorin, M.D., MBA …. {Doctor Dorin’s most recent column at the Washington Times: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/medicine-and-politics-america/2011/dec/22/obamacare-exposes-malpractice-organized-medicine/}
Technology has come a long way in the last twenty years since I finished my residency in anesthesiology and critical care medicine atJohnsHopkinsUniversity. Back then, in the early nineties, doctors read newspapers, journals and magazines on paper; it took more effort to put out these publications, and a great deal of effort was placed by editors and writers to effect a ‘scientific’ balance for the reader. Even when tackling political subjects, there was a professional pride and ethos which imparted an implicit demand for honesty.
Today’s world of cyber particles and LED screens pushes an overload of information which requires no more than the toggle of a button to instantly send out information to millions of potential recipients and readers. In the modern medium of publishing, it is easy to cover a broad breadth of subjects, and even easier to be prolific. The twenty-first century physician must be in command of the latest breakthroughs, medical innovations, pharmaceuticals, and even political machinations, all of which have profound implications for the delivery of medical services and bedside care.
If you research the writings of the American Medical Association over the last few years, since the topic of healthcare reform and health insurance reform have resurfaced in the political arena, you will notice a very marked bias in their writings. It is common knowledge that today’s AMA is a left-leaning organization—one which has openly espoused support for ‘universal’, socialized-type medicine on a national scale.
We must remind ourselves, however, of how far the AMA has veered from its historical path. There was a time when the AMA did not vote pocketbook over principle; and did not promote the expansion of the third-party system for payment of medical services. (* Doctor Edward Annis, President of the AMA in the early 1960s, speaks in the videos below)
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFesycofKk4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqVkOlhbsEM
Many may recall the AMA’s ‘secret pact’ with the federal government, originating decades ago through a deal made with the precursor to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), then known as HCFA (Health Care Finance Administration).
Details of this pact can be found in the archives of the AAPS Website – http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/article1.html and the website of America’s Medical Society, all thanks to the original research and investigation done by AAPS General Counsel, Andrew Schlafly. The fact that this ‘secret pact’ has delivered approximately 70-100 million dollars annually in recent years to the AMA from exclusively copyright royalties (for the medical billing codes used by all health insurance carriers in the United States) should not be lost on the reader.
Note that the AMA has a membership base of only about 15% of all practicing American doctors at best; this membership has been declining over the years, and these royalties to the AMA have precluded their need to cater to the needs of the majority of physicians in independent practice.
Contrary to the positions of most doctors in America, the AMA and many of its feeder state medical societies demonstrate a bias as it pertains to the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (their publications evoke an uncomfortable sense that they remain in promotion and implementation mode for the ‘Act’, despite such continued widespread concern and debate within the medical community): For example…
- ·AMA website: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/strategic-issues.page
- ·New Haven County Medical Association, “Health System Reform Insight,” June 3, 2011 http://www.nhcma.org/national_060311.html
- ·Iowa Medical Society, February 10, 2011: “New Resource Helps Put Prevention Into Practice for Seniors” http://www.iowamedical.org/news_detail.cfm?newsID=408
What may be less obvious, but no less interesting, is the coverage of healthcare reform by third party journals and magazines, many of which cater to the healthcare community in the areas of nursing, medicine, outpatient surgery and the biomedical industry. One would think that these venues would have an obligation to write on political matters, or even to stay neutral in the debate. No reader could possibly ignore the paramount significance that healthcare reform has on literally every aspect of the American medical system, so it would be expected that healthcare reform would be openly and vigorously debated.
One would think that there would be clearly an onus, even an imperative, to discuss medical insurance reform, tort reform, inter-state health insurance competition, scope of practice barriers between physicians and non-physicians, and so forth. Editors in the medical arena would have to consciously work very hard to avoid including the healthcare reform debate in their publications, but many have done just that by exercising perhaps the most powerful journalistic tool at their disposal: silence.
Try querying ‘health care reform’ and the name of one of the many trade journals or medical newsletters in your favorite Internet search engine to test out this premise. Many of the largest such periodicals have proven themselves irrelevant by avoiding the subject altogether.
Silence is a powerful weapon in our age of rapid communication; many in positions of influence, such as medical newsletter editors and local medical society directors, have scurrilously decided to ignore the ‘Affordable Care Act’—hoping instead that by doing so the ‘Act’ will find quiet implementation and transform society to their liking. Rather than shed light on the most important ‘transformative’ process in the lives of any practicing physician (or patient), many such media have focused their attention on lesser local, state and federal legislative issues. One can conjure up the metaphor of a squirrel getting busy storing nuts under a tree which is shaking with every movement of the hacksaw at its trunk; even though the ground is shaking and leaves are falling at a precipitous rate, the animal goes about its daily business as if nothing new is happening at all. Dutiful observers can see the bigger picture as the tree is felled and the landscape reshaped around it, making any concern over lesser housekeeping chores irrelevant. No one is fooled by this charade.
Of late, it seems, political leaders in and out of the field of medicine, are toting the line ‘we need reform anyway’ to justify the shortcomings, under-estimated costs, and trampling of liberties meted out in the thousands of pages of the ‘Affordable Care Act’ health care reform legislation.
More formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or to some merely Obamacare, the ‘Act’ has dividedAmerica. Regardless of the outcome of the legal challenges (slated for the Supreme Court’s review beginning this March 2012), this contentious law was designed to gradually centralize and nationalize the way health care is delivered and paid for in America. The subject of Obamacare is sure to dominate the 2012 election cycle.
Some may disagree on the legality of its application of the Commerce Clause, but none can disagree that the PPACA law seeks to dominate, control, and ‘manage’ health care from a more centralized, federal focal point and in a way unprecedented inU.S.history.
The recent rulings on the PPACA law by the Federal Appellate Court in Atlanta (the ‘Eleventh Circuit Court’) and a District Court in Pennsylvania–which found the ‘individual mandate’ that all Americans must purchase the new federal health insurance to be unconstitutional–afford some degree of comfort to those who are opposed to Obamacare.
The 11th Circuit court curiously also ruled, however, that, despite the absence of a severability clause in the ‘Act’, the rest of the law could be implemented without the individual mandate component. Whether the oddly named ‘Affordable Care Act’ could survive external legislative funding cuts, or the absence of internal funding via the individual mandate, may be a moot point. Ultimately, the legality of Obamacare will be settled at the level of the Supreme Court.
As it was with the scurried passage of the bill by the Democrats in sequestered Congressional halls, the name of this game for die-hard liberals in medical circles is simply survival: will the bill survive to see the light of full implementation in 2014, or will it be killed by legislative and electoral fiat or be summarily quashed by the Supreme Court?
Whittled away as Obamacare may be by the current Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the ‘Act’ still lives and breathes and grows. The Democrats who crafted it did so with adept skill and--until the recent, heightened attention about our national debt crisis—questionable funding. To some, it seems that the PPACA law was cleverly designed to hobble its way through the next presidential election cycle if necessary.
Regardless of political persuasion, the ‘Act’ is a bold demonstration of what some would call the corruption of power in government. Those who created it did so with fervent speed after the election of Barack Obama, seemingly more so to grab federal power and re-shape their vision of federalism; those who took over control of Congress in 2010 have likewise moved with hastiness to undo what they possibly could to reduce the impact of the liberal agenda. Even the well-intentioned Ryan Plan to reform Medicare was left vulnerable to political gamesmanship—a regrettable consequence of the power of ‘power’.
Make no mistake about it, the elite minority who control the medical establishment inAmericado so with unyielding focus on their out-of-step agenda. What may seem like gentlemanly protocol at first blush is instead the most blatant form of dishonesty. Likewise, the strange, oblique silence of liberal editors, intended to avoid and subdue the debate about healthcare reform in this country, should be exposed and broken.
For more on this subject and related matters, see www.AmericasMedicalSociety.com.
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Bill Gunderson 
