The Prescription From Obama’s Own Doctor
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT
As a society, we trust doctors to be more concerned with the pulse of their patients than the pulse of commerce. Yet the American Medical Association is using that trust to try to block a robust public insurance option as part of health reform.
In fact the A.M.A. now represents only 19 percent of practicing physicians (that’s my calculation, which the A.M.A. neither confirms nor contests). Its membership has declined in part because of its embarrassing historical record: the A.M.A. supported segregation, opposed President Harry Truman’s plans for national health insurance, backed tobacco, denounced Medicare and opposed President Bill Clinton’s health reform plan.
So I hope President Obama tunes out the A.M.A. and reaches out instead to somebody to whom he’s turned often for medical advice. That’s Dr. David Scheiner, a Chicago internist who was Mr. Obama’s doctor for more than two decades, until he moved into the White House this year.
“They’ve always been on the wrong side of things,” Dr. Scheiner told me, speaking of the A.M.A. “They may be protecting their interests, but they’re not protecting the interests of the American public.
(More here.)
NYT
As a society, we trust doctors to be more concerned with the pulse of their patients than the pulse of commerce. Yet the American Medical Association is using that trust to try to block a robust public insurance option as part of health reform.
In fact the A.M.A. now represents only 19 percent of practicing physicians (that’s my calculation, which the A.M.A. neither confirms nor contests). Its membership has declined in part because of its embarrassing historical record: the A.M.A. supported segregation, opposed President Harry Truman’s plans for national health insurance, backed tobacco, denounced Medicare and opposed President Bill Clinton’s health reform plan.
So I hope President Obama tunes out the A.M.A. and reaches out instead to somebody to whom he’s turned often for medical advice. That’s Dr. David Scheiner, a Chicago internist who was Mr. Obama’s doctor for more than two decades, until he moved into the White House this year.
“They’ve always been on the wrong side of things,” Dr. Scheiner told me, speaking of the A.M.A. “They may be protecting their interests, but they’re not protecting the interests of the American public.
(More here.)
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