Prescription for Disaster

The results of your study (59% of doctors support national health care system, Dr. Ronald Ackermann and Dr. Aaron Carroll, University of Indiana School of Medicine, March 31, 2008) reported in the media yesterday are rather intriguing. I find in talking with colleagues that doctors are not so much enamored with a national health care system as they are simply frustrated with the current authorization and reimbursement mess (much of that government created). What they don't realize is that the devil that you know may be better than the devil that you don't know. The simple truth is that the federal government lacks the constitutional power and authority to be enmeshed in any sort of federal health care system or insurance program, including by the way Medicare. I have raised this point with several sitting Congressmen and Senators as well as all of the current Presidential candidates and none have been able to refute the point. The mood seems to be that we'll do whatever we want, hang the Constitution. Without a legal foundation we are headed for anarchy. Doctors are simply unwitting pawns in the overall equation. My experience over the years in things political is that doctors by and large are woefully uninformed and disengaged from that arena. Which is why the liberal-leaning A.M.A represented three-fourths of U.S. physicians 30 years ago but today barely speaks for a third. The current system needs reform, but not the kind that would lead us into the disaster which is evident in all countries with any sort of nationalized health care insurance or delivery system. We must run in the opposite direction. But don't expect doctors to be leading the charge. They know medicine, not business or government. Don't look to them for validation or leadership on the topic. Your study only tells me that 59% of doctors don't know what the heck they are talking about! As Anatole France said, 'If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."