Letter to Obama From the Mad As Hell Doctors

Letter to Obama From the Mad As Hell Doctors
by Paul Hochfeld

As one of the Mad As Hell Doctors from Oregon, I had the surprising good fortune of being an uninvited, but welcomed, guest to the President Obama's recent meeting in the Rose Garden with "physicians from around the country." I hand-delivered the following letter to one of President Obama's aides. I wonder. Has he read it?

October 5, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Although I would dearly appreciate being invited to speak with you and the other invited physicians this morning, I understand this is problematic and unlikely. I must, therefore, settle for a letter in which I hope to express a great deal of compassion for the difficulty of your predicament. You are caught between those on the right, some of whom want you to fail and accuse you of going "too far," and those on the left, like myself, who, passionately, want you to succeed and, equally passionately, want a real solution to our health care crisis. As you may know, in September, the Mad As Hell Doctors from Oregon wended our way to Washington, visiting twenty-six cities in twenty-two days, telling uncomfortable Truths about our health care system, none of which is news to you, but I state clearly for those who might be eavesdropping.

• We spend more than twice as much per capita as most of the rest of the industrialized world.
• By the standard measures of performance, the United States ranks 37th, internationally, in health care outcomes. Not exactly anything to be proud of.
• Forty-five thousand people die every year in our country because of barriers to obtaining appropriate medical care in a timely manner.
• And, finally, we are the only developed country in which people often go bankrupt because of health care costs and three fourths of them had health insurance at the time they became ill.

We spoke to people about the moral imperative of true Universal Access and the main barrier to accomplishing this: cost. We explained why it cost us so much. Undeniably, we waste 20% of all our health care money servicing an Insurance industry that adds nothing to the health and complicates the lives of our providers. As you know, the other drivers on excessive cost, include, among others

• the primary care crisis
• the chaos of medical records,
• the fear of liability,
• the mass marketing of prescription drugs,
• the pressure for profits,
• "our" unrealistic expectations, especially at the end of life, and
• the perverse incentive incentives that are created by the fee for service reimbursement mechanism that encourages physicians to do more and more and more without regard of "just enough."

Bypassing the insurance industry with a Single Payer Solution is NOT just about saving 20%, immediately, so we can afford Universal Access. It's about having a system with which to deal with the other drivers on cost, as does every other developed country in the world. More accurately, today, instead of a health care system, we have a "for-profit private insurance-based sick-care non-system." You know what I am talking about.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/08-1

now, if only someone would listen.

Obama and the powers that be don't give a damn about the masses.

self-serving want to continue our "for-profit private insurance sick-care non-system?" The answer is nobody of good faith and not corrupt, venal, and self-serving could, eos. ;)

and obtain coverage for everyone.

"...I believe you understand that none of the health reform bills that are being seriously considered by either side of Congress will accomplish true Universal Access without breaking the bank..."

This is the study referenced by Olbermann last night and yes, some of these people are undocumented workers, IMO we should care about every person.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/18/as_baucus_unveils...

"DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, this was a federal study done by the CDC. They collected the data; of course, we analyzed it. They collected the data. They interviewed thousands of people and also had them examined by a physician and gave them lab tests. So we have very detailed information, not only about socioeconomic factors like education and income, but also their baseline health, how healthy were they at the beginning. Some were uninsured. And then the CDC followed these people for up to twelve years to see who lived and who died. So we were able to see what was the effect of lacking insurance on death rates and found that, in fact, people with no health insurance had a 40 percent higher death rate than similar people who had insurance.


So this—actually, when you do out the numbers, this implies that for every million people who remain uninsured in this country, about 1,000 deaths can be expected. So, perhaps Senator Baucus is happy with leaving 25 million Americans uninsured, but that translates into, predictably, predictably 25,000 American deaths each year due to the lack of health insurance. And that’s completely unacceptable to me as a physician, and it’s completely unacceptable to the other 17,000 physicians who’ve joined me in Physicians for a National Health Program to advocate for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer national health insurance."