Physicians’ positions
Friday, June 26 2009
More photos and notes from the HCAN rally; this one’s for stargirl65 and Joe Wright, both of whom called me out for lumping all physicians in with the AMA. This is the banner of the National Physicians’ Alliance, a member of the HCAN coalition and a strong presence at the rally.
Obviously, NPA supports a strong position on health care reform. Their President-elect spoke quite compellingly, to judge by the audience reception – I was a little too far away to hear exactly what she said. Lots and lots of people were taking pictures of this banner, too. I think the AMA kerfuffle has made people a lot more aware of how many physicians actually support reform; it might end up being a massive backfire for the AMA.
More – including a famous physician looking scary – behind the jump…
After the rally I went looking for a few NPA members to talk to, maybe do a brief interview for the blog. The first person I approached turned out to be Dr. Jean Silver-Isenstadt, the founder and executive director of the NPA. I told her who I was and what I wanted (DuncanCross.net? never heard of it), and she invited me to a “town hall” meeting that NPA had helped organize.
I put “town hall” in scare quotes because it was held in the basement ballroom of a DC hotel, complete with ugly dangly-glass chandelier. There were a lot of people in that room, however – many of them in white lab coats or nurses’ scrubs. At the front of the room was Howard Dean. This picture might be difficult to make out because he was out of range of my flash. Also, my hands shake a little, so it’s a bit blurry. He talked a lot about the legislative process, and got a good response from the audience. Whatever his failings as a presidential candidate, he’s good at explaining how things work in DC. I was surprised to hear him say that he thought progressives could work with PhRMA on the issue. The only group he said was totally intransigent was the health insurance industry. There were lots of stories from the audience, even from physicians, about awful insurance company experiences.
Here’s a cropped and enlarged version of the previous shot. The light spots are either my flash reflecting off his retinas, or crazy liberal devil eyes – depending on your opinion of Gov. Dean.
Also speaking was Sen. Stabenow (D-MI); she’s on the Finance Committee, which is one of two committees in the Senate responsible for health care. She was less helpful than Gov. Dean – certainly less direct, but she also has to worry about re-election. She did point out that at this stage in the process, reform advocates need not be worried about getting a perfect bill out of the Finance Committee. We just need a bill, and if it sucks we can go back and fix it in later steps. A man in the audience asked which Senators on the Finance Committee needed persuading, but Stabenow refused to name names.
The woman in this photo introduced herself as “Dr. for the past week So-and-So”; apparently she just graduated from medical school. She asked a question about increasing the primary care workforce, and making sure that physicians are more representative of the diversity in the country as a whole. I don’t exactly remember the answer – something about scholarships in the stimulus package – but it got a good response. I’m sharing this photo because a lot of the physicians in attendance were also on the young side, which I find encouraging.
The one unfortunate thing about NPA’s rhetoric was that they kept talking about how they speak for patients. I think they’re doing right by their patients, but I don’t think they should presume to speak for us. Someone even suggested physicians should be pushing their patients to get involved in health care reform. This is a bad idea. I have no problem with doctors talking to their patients about health policy, but the idea that doctors should be pushing for particular policies with patients (even policies I agree with) is just a bit too much. Better the doctors should be looking for ways to encourage patients to express their own views and ideas about healthcare.
In any case, it was great to see so many physicians active and outspoken on reform. The more I listen to and talk to physicians who do support reform, the worse I feel about the implications of my post on the AMA. I think my penance will be to follow up with Dr. Silver-Isenstadt, and see if we can’t have a productive chat about doctors and patients and a better world for both.
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