Doctors, Presidents, Policy, and Politics
Mike Abrams, Executive Vice President of the Iowa Medical Society
President Barack Obama addresses the AMA.The line was very long, the wait was long, but it was worth it. It was exceedingly cool to be in the room when President Obama addressed the AMA convention. It is absolutely a testament to the esteem with which the President holds both the AMA as an organization and medicine as a profession that he came to Chicago, brought his senior-most health policy advisors (including Nancy Ann DeParle and Peter Orzag), and spoke for nearly a full hour.
Yes, he said things with which the room disagreed. I'd guess that if you spoke to yourself for an hour you might find something to disagree with. The policies we disagree with President Obama on are important, but the media exploited the areas of disagreement and snored at the areas of agreement.
For example, one newspaper mentioned "a smattering of boos" when Obama said he did not support liability caps. I was in the room, and frankly I was concerned he would get booed when he said that. But what I heard was 2 seconds of barely-audible groan. Sometimes the truth is boring, and some media outlets are so hopeful that they can report a roomful of physicians booed the President of the United States that a quiet groan becomes "a smattering of boos."
Obama does not support caps, and we have to acknowledge that. But we need to seize on the fact that he is open to other modes of tort reforms and be open-minded in our own approach - medical courts, affidavits of merit - those and other things should be on the table.
There are reforms to the health care sector we have lobbied for since time immemorial, such as formulaic changes in physician reimbursement, insurance regulation, anti-trust relief, medical education debt relief, and many others. On many of those, we have presidential support.
I would encourage you to read the text of President Obama's speech to AMA and form your own thoughts.
Read the transcript, listen to the audio or watch the video of President Obama's speech.