Obama tells doctors: ‘The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend.’
Obama tells doctors: ‘The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend.’
Last week, the American Medical Association (AMA) registered its opposition to a key plank of President Obama’s health reform efforts — the creation of a public health insurance plan. At the same time, Senate Democrats have begun backing away from a public plan and instead gravitating towards a proposal to create a non-profit co-operative. Media reports have suggested that the White House may be warming to the idea of dropping the public plan. But today, in a speech before the AMA convention, Obama reiterated his strong support for a truly national public health insurance plan:
OBAMA: If you don’t like your health coverage or don’t have any insurance, you will have a chance to take part in what we’re calling a Health Insurance Exchange. … And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.
Obama told the physicians, “The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend, I believe.” Watch it:
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Has anyone seen “Mars Attacks”? This one alien walks around with a amplified language translator saying “We are your friends” and then shoots ya….
Does Barack own a language translator?
June 15th, 2009 at 2:03 pmThe AMA is against the public option and has been against health care reform for decades because of worries over physician compensation. Their “evidence” of lesser compensation from public entities is the problems with compensation from Medicare, etc. Problem is, this is mainly myth or isolated cases. But any case of lack of compensation from Medicare for care by a physician can be traced to underfunding of the program, interference from private health insurance companies or simply because Medicare covers the most expensive types of patients.
A Single Payer system, or at the very (very) least, a robust public option with many, diverse, members (e.g. a LARGE RISK POOL of healthy AND not so healthy people) the system will have plenty of money in it to compensate for all care.
The AMA must wake up to the fact that they are bilked out of compensation from private insurers all the time as they retroactively refuse to cover already given care/treatments. They don’t get compensated when their patients go bankrupt.
More importantly, the American public cannot let the AMA’s concerns for getting paid trump the our RIGHT to healthcare. Not “free” care, but complete, affordable care.
http://www.healthcareforall.org
June 15th, 2009 at 2:07 pmskarecro Says:
Has anyone seen “Mars Attacks”?
Yes. It’s fiction.
You do realize that, don’t you?
June 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pmAnd just what would be so sinister about trying to provide a public option healthcare insurance to as many citizens as possible? This is something most developed nations do, and instead we have a system that already involves a ridiculous amount of expenditure with no corresponding quality for it. Try again, Skarecro.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:10 pmPublic option would also help businesses be more competitive in a global context…interesting that scare is part of skarecro’s name…
June 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pmSingle payer, President Obama.
Do it once, and do it right.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pmIf you have no health insurance at all, how can the government interfere between you and your Doctor?
June 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pmskarecro Says:
Has anyone seen “Mars Attacks”? This one alien walks around with a amplified language translator saying “We are your friends” and then shoots ya….
Does Barack own a language translator?
No.
But the republic fascist party own several.
So do most major corporations and insurance companies.
And, it appears, the insurance companies loaned one to the AMA.
Go figure.
Then.
Go away.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:13 pmI can only pay so much attention to this part the debate before I just start to get too furious. When it comes to education, we have no problem telling teachers how much they should get paid, we have no trouble mewing about how ‘throwing money’ at schools will not fix them, we expect teachers to do their internships not only without getting paid, but actually charging them tuition to do so.
Yet with every other field, we seem to agree that you have to pay talented people what they are worth.
Sorry if that is a little OT. I’d like to try and understand the AMAs point of view a little bit here, but I have no sympathy for people who went into a field that requires care and compassion because they wanted to make fat bucks.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:14 pmAdded Obama “…and if you’re being a total doochebag, sometimes it’s up to your ‘friend’ to kick your ass twelve ways from Sunday.”
June 15th, 2009 at 2:14 pmZooey Says:
Single payer, President Obama.
Do it once, and do it right.
Ditto.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:14 pmLittle Freep Goofballs Says: Yes. It’s fiction. You do realize that, don’t you?
Oh, and skarecro, you can’t get a real brain from the Wizard of OZ either because that’s fiction also.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:15 pmMr President
The only friends that US doctors want or care about are named Jackson , Grant and Franklin , on pieces of green paper ……
June 15th, 2009 at 2:17 pmThe AMA doesn’t represent any of the physicians I know when they come out against the public option.
A single, simple system would cut down on a physician’s administrative overhead, and the associated nightmares! Right now, each insurer believes it is the only one the physician’s office contends with, and each has its own rules and regs and processes and procedures. It’s nothing but a headache, and more and more docs are just saying “no” to dealing with insurance, shifting that back to the patient.
The “you pay me know and you pursue your own insurance company” is the only way some of these docs are staying in business.
The docs who oppose the public option are the corporate docs, not the small offices.
PEACE
June 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pmIt seems that if it don’t make dollars it don’t make sense…
June 15th, 2009 at 2:22 pmKeep in mind that eliminating the profit margin from insurance would drop health care cost by 15-20%.
Having an insurance that would actually *pay* a claim in a timely fashion would also eliminate the “non-payer” portion of our health cost.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pmSorry OT, but wasn’t the AMA the same org that drove midwifes out of business…resulting in more infant deaths at childbirth at the time?
June 15th, 2009 at 2:27 pmpastcaring Says:
Sorry OT, but wasn’t the AMA the same org that drove midwifes out of business…resulting in more infant deaths at childbirth at the time?
The AMA finished the job the Salem witch trials began. Well, at least according to Jack Nicholson’s character in Witches of Eastwick!
On a more serious note, you are correct. The AMA also lobbies to keep certified nurse practitioners from being able to be considered “primary care providers”, but I have found them to as qualified and capable as their physician overlords.
PEACE
June 15th, 2009 at 2:32 pmHealthcare expenditures now account for 18% of our GDP!
A recent study shows that the country is wasting about $700 billion, or about 30 percent of all sick care costs, in unnecessary procedures created by fee-for-service specialists who not only are paid to provide the services, but create the services in the first place. Not surprisingly, these specialists are by-and-large members of the American Medical Association, which has come out against any kind of public-financing system.
From what I’ve heard, the AMA is not to be trusted.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:35 pmThe scare meme about ‘free’ health care is pathetic. Small to middle size business would have no problem with contributing to a public fund (as they do now with SSI and FICA) and as an employee, I would also contribute, just as I do now.
What would change is the yearly hunt for ‘cost effective’ health insurance, the annual boost of health care costs (usually in the double digit range which is why employers are constantly seeking).
What would change is the constant need to support all of the nonhealth care providers who take money out of the system while providing roadblocks to healthcare.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:42 pmThe AMA has a hammerlock on medicine. If it can’t be done with a knife or a designer drug, it is witchcraft. Homeopathic, Chiropratic, anything that doesn’t involve blood and twisted chemicals is medicine. The rest is voodoo.
I guess they forgot where penicillin and aspirin came from.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:46 pmskarecro Says:
Has anyone seen “Mars Attacks”? This one alien walks around with a amplified language translator saying “We are your friends” and then shoots ya….
Does Barack own a language translator?
Why fear that we’d be shot in the back about this? This is something that needs to be addressed, and I’d like to trust Obama regarding this. If things don’t work out, then he loses that trust. I doubt he’d want to fool us here.
Besides, there’s an old saying that we have:
June 15th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
In some fit of Nixonian madness, we allowed the health industry to become “for-profit”. Anything that would reduce the profitability of any health related corporation – hospitals, HMO’s and such, and insurance companies, are going to create a massive backlash against it. I guarantee you. These for-profit corporations are snowing our legislators under with cash to kill this public option.
The AMA is going to side with the ones who butter their bread. The “consumer” of medical services has no dog in this fight. Calls and emails seldom trump campaign cash. Y’all can try, and I wish us all good luck, but I’m not hopeful.
Public health has to become a human right once again – part of “the Commons” – not some cash cow to be milked until she is dry and exhausted.
It’s wrong that health care should be “for profit” in the first place. To a health care corporation, services and care denied are profits to be had. It creates perverted incentives.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:54 pmI want the same coverage and congress, the cabinet and the president. Anything less is unacceptable. Watch this primary campaign promise by John Edwards to nullify those coverages if they did not give us the same coverage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWbXNUbUj0A
We need to ask our representation why they cannot be as forthright as John Edwards was about healthcare.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:54 pmmary lacewing Says:
[...]
From what I’ve heard, the AMA is not to be trusted.
yesterday i heard a rebroadcast of LEFT JAB… they interviewed Dr. John Abramson, author of OVERDOSED AMERICA…
he states that pharma is behind published studies and skew the results..
not a surprise…
June 15th, 2009 at 2:55 pmThe AMA is in the tank with the republican crime family.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:55 pmPoor AMA.
The big fat torpedo to their boogieman claims lies in the unalterable fact that public-option healthcare has worked successfully around the world for decades, allowing other countries to leave the US in the dust on healthcare.
It’s about the money, not from compensation, but from the insurance and pharma lobby. The AMA is essentially claiming that the US can’t duplicate a baldly successful system demonstrated over and over in other countries; Other countries that continually outrank US healthcare year after year.
The new AMA: We’re #37 and fighting to stay there!
USA…*cough*..USA…*wheeze*…USA…*aaack*…(thump!)
June 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pmWell lets see here……you need insurance to help pay for your doctor, if you have a bad doctor you need a lawyer, the bad doctor needs insurance to pay for the messed up paitent and his laywer, the band doctor needs a laywer to make sure the millions are distributed accrodingly….
June 15th, 2009 at 3:01 pmTroll,
Medical care and malpractice insurance are not the same thing.
You’re welcome.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pmIn 2004 I had an emergency operation. Satyed in a public hospital for one night and for a whole month I had nurses coming to my house in a daily base to look after the post operation.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pmMy cost AU$0.00 dollars…
I live in Australia.
24.kasinca Says: We need to ask our representation why they cannot be as forthright as John Edwards was about healthcare.
I dunno if I’d group “forthright” and “John Edwards” in the same sentence. He almost knowingly handed the election to old man McCain and duped his supporters.
A better advocate would be more convincing, however correct his points.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:03 pmHelth, education and housing are rights of the citzens of a civilized society. They are government duties!
June 15th, 2009 at 3:04 pmThe new AMA: Hey…#37 is a great golf score, so what’s the problem?
*slaps forehead*
June 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pmCould President Obama write an EO making corporate campaign contributions ILLEGAL and put an end to the best congress money can buy?
I don’t see congress making an effort to do this.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:07 pm22.Purple State Says: Why fear that we’d be shot in the back about this? This is something that needs to be addressed, and I’d like to trust Obama regarding this. If things don’t work out, then he loses that trust. I doubt he’d want to fool us here.
Is this snark?
Have you been following anything along the lines of telecom immunity, Habeas Corpus, State secrets, Bagram…..?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:08 pmhave you noticed I have started drinking already…… steam rolled puppies, North Korea and atomic bombs, Uhigers swimming in the Bahamas straight from Gitmo, Obama wants to mess with my perfectly good heath care provider, Iran is on the brink of disaster and Cheney wants the attacks on America to start…….Job Biden will be making cars, clown mobiles for sure, they tell me to take my Dodge truck to “Fix It At Tonys”. Bush went to Texas and all hell broke loose.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pmZooey, your on the pipe early I see……. Medical “care givers” are covered by insurance which they pay from the money they receive from “giving care” should they make a mistake they give some of it to their lawyers which are “on retainer” and the lawyers take the money they got from the doctors and buy health insurance and the insurance company takes some of the money they make and hire lawyers to protect themselves from everyone and by then most of us are on the government dole or live in the Smokey Mountains like you.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pmhad enough, I don’t think that Obama can abrogate the rights of free speech with an Executive Order. In the last Supreme Court decision on this matter, Buckley vs. Valeo, the court pretty much decided that throwing cash at the Congress critters is a protected First Ammendment right. It would take an act of Congress to change it.
Ya think that’ll ever happen?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pmSlappyBastinado Says:
——————————————————————————–
have you noticed I have started drinking already……
June 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Weren’t you told that drinking intensifies stupidity , and doesn’t cease or hide it ?
Apparently not……..
June 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pmsacopenapa @ 30
You and others from ALL other countries must be looking at US as if we were idiots.
We are idiots and will be until we get some kind of campaign finance reform to end the madness of contributors having more influence than voters. Our bought off congress is bought off to keep that from passing also.
Or we can take it to the streets, but I don’t see the passion in American as other countries ex: Iran.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pmNCBlueneck Says:
had enough, I don’t think that Obama can abrogate the rights of free speech with an Executive Order.
Until we can get campaign finance reform, and at this point I don’t care how, we are screwed as the contributors will always have more influence and run the country in law making.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:35 pmI appreciate it when trolls write full paragraphs. It makes me feel so superior ignoring something that took a lot of time to write. Of course, time is saved by avoiding facts, grammar and proper spelling, but still..
PEACE
June 15th, 2009 at 3:36 pmArn….sounds like that government gig you got going is working our fairly well. When Obama and his crew screw everything up and there is no money left to give to you for your survival, I will be one of many with the helping hand your going to need…. I understand your helpless feeling and condition though…………
June 15th, 2009 at 3:37 pmPam, did you and Patsy ever get married?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:38 pmThe trolls are getting scared. And even more silly.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pmB.O. is so full of bologna…it runs out his ears!
June 15th, 2009 at 7:22 pmI have worked on both sides of this issue for the insurer and the physician. I worked for an orthopedic surgeon in Iowa. Doctors are stuck with the the lowest medicare reimbursement and also the large aging population. Say you do a hip replacement on a medicare patient. The Dr. charges 6000 for the procedure, this includes all follow up with the patient. Medicare reimbursement on this procedure is perhaps today only 700. The amount of time that the physician spends with the patient and then to arrange the surgery (talking to primary care providers, going over all past medical history and then the surgery and aftercare) Realistically, it’s not worth it for him to do the surgery. Then say in order to keep patients you have to sign up for Blue Cross and others. So you charge 7000 for the procedure, your actual payment might only be 1000. I just think it’s sad and I really think that the Presidents plan has to work.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:33 pmI have also had the best insurance, where I only have a 10 copay for office visits and 5 for medication. My husband lost his job and we now have a new plan with pre-existing condition clauses. My son and I both have chronic conditions which will not be covered for one year. I picked up just 2 of the medications we take of about 6 today and the price is up to 535.00 for both! So we make to much money for assistance, but the cost of the drugs will put us under. It’s terrible. Something has to give.
SlappyMoron is back again. Begging us to pity him for being so stupid and pathetic. Dont do it. I know he is pitiful and stupid beyond belief but he is ADDICTED to our pity. Give him some and he will just beg for more and more and never be satisfied. No amount of pity is enough for him he will always beg for more. He has no brain. He has no self respect. He is unhappy, unloved, no one respects him and his bleak, empty life is so dismal and pathetic he cant help but come in to sites like this begging us to pity him.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:59 amRealityPunk you are a sad and worthless piece of human debris. You are a pustulent, seeping herpes sore on the butt of humanity. You are a stupid punkass troll and almost as pathetic as SlappyMoron. We get that your self hatred makes you show everyone how stupid you are day after day but really, stop embarassing yourself and just STFU
June 16th, 2009 at 7:02 amen son videolar
June 16th, 2009 at 9:42 amen son videolar