Obama's Dr. For Single-Payer Health Care

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=14090

June 19th, 2009 6:47 pm
Obama's Doctor Knocks ObamaCare

Dr. David Scheiner took care of Obama for 22 years. But they don't see eye-to-eye on how to fix the health care system.

By David Whelan / Forbes

David Scheiner, an internist based in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, has a diverse practice of lower-income adults from the nearby housing projects mixed with famous patients like U.S. Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the late writer Studs Terkel and, most notably, President Barack Obama.

Scheiner, 71, was Obama's doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate's "excellent health" in a letter last year. He's still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but he worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. "I'm not sure he really understands what we face in primary care," Scheiner says...

"He doesn't see all the pain, it's so tragic out here," he says. "Obama's wonderful, but on this one I'm not sure if he's getting the right input."

What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be "Medicare for all," a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. "A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won't starve," Scheiner says.Scheiner thinks that Obama's "public plan" reform doesn't go far enough. He supports the idea of that option for people who don't like or can't afford their HMO. But he worries that it will be watered down or not happen at all. "It's nonsense that the private insurance companies need to be protected," he says. "Why? Because they've done such a good job?"

Straight talk from someone who knows.

interests and paid Congress.

We need to make very clear what we're offering and why ots better. Why it isn't something to be afraid of, but we can't just blame Obama. He's tried many things that seem reasonable that Congress nixes.

to do something about it. And playing footsie with Big Pharma and the Insurance Companie CEOS is not going to ease the pain one bit.

I had a friend who died in 2000 from cancer - she had no health insurance and never got treatment till it was too late. Thousands of people today have curable illneses but will die because they have no access to care. This is shameful.

But we just can't stop supporting those we know would help. The powerful enemy has too many friends nixing legislation, so how do we support Obama who wants to do the right thing, getting 90% of what he wants.

We need to keep electing Dems, progressives, not expect miracles right away, and slower than we'd like to get improvement.

Hardly rah-rah, but es verdad.