Over-medicated
Thursday, November 6 2008
The WSJ counts 14 doctors in the incoming Congress. Here’s Dr. Michael Burgess (R-TX):
“In my humble opinion, there aren’t enough doctors in Congress. It leaves us with a pretty narrow group of individuals, and it’s a little harder to build consensus on common ground.”
I’ll ignore the idea that consensus is easier with more people and go straight to the math: 14 doctors out 535 legislators works out to 2%-3%. Meanwhile, there are about 700,000 doctors in the country, out of a population of 300 million – that’s a mere 2/10ths of a percent. So doctors are roughly 10 times as common in Congress as they are in society. Even still, cautions the WSJ:
Don’t hold your breath for them to band together to overcome party differences and lead the nation toward health-care reform.
I don’t care if they’re all charter members of PHNP: the idea that doctors should lead health-care reform because they’re doctors is just naive credentialism, and insulting to everyone else affected by this issue. If some of these doctors happen to have good ideas about health care reform, then I’ll gladly line up behind them – because they’re people with good ideas, not because they’re doctors.
By the way: some 16% of Americans have no health insurance. How many people in the next Congress will be uninsured: 0. Not a single one.
Update: By way of response to Kevin, MD, let me point out that I don’t actually think it matters how many doctors are in Congress, so long as they’re not there to legislate according to their own narrow professional interests (the point of the WSJ article being that they should and could do so). For the same reason, I don’t think it matters how many members of Congress are lawyers, or businessmen, or jackeroos, so long as they work in the best interests of their constituents and the nation.
Physicians are on the front-line of taking care of patients. They see first hand the problems of the system and have some insight into how things can be fixed. They are certainly more qualified based on experience alone than the other politicians in Congress who really have no idea how to fix things other than to legislate the government to over-regulate medicine. The more that politicians became involved in medicine versus physicians, especially since the 1960s, the worse the healthcare system has gotten in the United States. Take physicians out of the leadership in healthcare, and you get serious problems as evidenced by the current reality of healthcare in this country.
There are approximately 200 lawyers out of 635 members of congress appoximately 31% of the representation. There are over 1.1 million lawyers out of a country of 300 million. So lawyers are 100 times as common in congress than in society. So they should lead the debate? Great post
Jenga – 228 with law degrees, by my count, but is it surprising that a law degree turns out to be good training for being a law-maker? Re-read the post, especially the update. I don’t think doctors or lawyers should be legislating according to their narrow professional interests in the first place, which is what the WSJ article seems to suggest. Should lawyers as lawyers lead the debate? No. But if the people who have the best ideas about reform happen to be lawyers, then they should definitely be in charge.
So vice versa being a physician should be good training to determine healthcare policy then and that shouldn’t be surprising to you. I would be much more worried about a group that is represented at 100 times the population in a representative democracy than one with 10. There is 10 times the risk of malfeasence.
Jenga – as far as I can tell, being a physician is good training to determine health care policy only as much as being a botanist is good training to determine agricultural policy, or being a mechanical engineer is good training to determine transportation policy. You’d think it would help at least a little, but so far physicians’ leadership on health-care policy has gotten us nowhere.
Meanwhile, you’re still missing my point about proportionality. Burgess is arguing that more doctors legislating as doctors would be a good thing. I’m arguing that it’s generally a bad thing for legislators to act according to their own professional interests, whatever those interests. If lawyers are doing so, then yes, that’s a bad thing, too. But where health care reform is concerned, if it came down to the difference between lawyers’ and doctors’ professional interests, the people who actually use the system – people like me – would be roughly equally screwed.
So I’m not worried about proportions so much as legislators who claim they should be acting in anything other than the best interests of their constituents and the nation. Being a doctor may well help a legislator see that, but time and time again doctors have proven that their interests are far from coterminous with the interests of the nation as a whole.
if you don’t care how many doctors are in congress why is the first paragraph of your discusssion about how doctors are over represented in congress but lawyers which apparently are 33% of congress are not.
guy – that’s a fair point; that paragraph could be a little clearer. But I think my prior comments speak directly to your concern.