Daily Kos: My Old Friend Karl

Daily Kos: My Old Friend Karl:

Karl is a previously very conservative republican physician in central PA...

"I got a sort of Norman Rockwell picture from it all, and the whole-cloth of that, I assumed, also included a strong commitment to the Republican Party.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. 'No,' Karl said. 'When you’re a G.P. like I am, and you see how people are struggling to pay their insurance, to buy their prescription drugs, to wrench hospice care out of their tight-fisted HMOs, you can’t support the Republicans.' My head exploded. I’d dreaded a political argument, but Karl had come over from the ‘Dark Side’! 'You know', he said, 'all of the G.P.s I know are voting Obama. We all feel that this country desperately needs Obama, that it can’t possibly afford another four years of these policies for the rich. The middle class will cease to exist with four more years of this. But it’s funny: all of the specialists I know, especially the plastic surgeons, the sports surgeons, the boutique doctors, they’re all supporting McCain. They’re making money hand over fist, and all they care about is tax breaks and lower malpractice premiums.'"

Amen. This is precisely how I see things shaking out. We may be in for a "class war" in medicine at some point in the near future, fighting for the soul of medicine and what it means to be physicians.

Cheers,

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