From our friends at the South Carolina Medical Association

Dear Colleague, [This was sent to the members of the SCMA - my comments are in italics below.]

The momentum that has been building in support of a nationalized health care system appears to be overwhelming. With health care overhaul bills on the fast-track in Congress, and with a new and powerful administration determined to pass legislation this year, the deck is stacked against us. We’ve been told to sit in the corner and watch while the “experts” figure out how to fix health care. The problem is that the “experts” who are fixing health care are the same people who have run Medicare into insolvency and created a Medicaid system that is inefficient and ineffective.

The federal government is kicking us down the road toward indentured servitude. Envision a world where each decision you make for every patient has to be approved through the laborious channels of government bureaucracy. Imagine the federal government dictating to you which patients yo can and cannot see and which treatments you can and cannot provide—not just for Medicare patients but for all of your patients. Consider what it will be like to be reimbursed for all of your patients at levels significantly less than current Medicare.

Physicians have been offered a seat at the table so long as we sit still with our hands folded in our laps and keep our mouths shut. Dutiful compliance and inaction are no longer options. The muzzle that the Feds placed on us must be removed and the decibel level of our voices must be raised so that we are unmistakably heard. We’re not suggesting a strike, but anything short of that is the kind of bold and thunderous statement we need to be making right now.

The leadership of the South Carolina Medical Association senses the anger and the building resentment and confusion that physicians are currently experiencing. Our commitment to channeling these strong feelings into action is strong and will not lessen. W will not stand silent and watch while the federal government destroys our health care system. In the next few weeks, we will be laying out a course of action to ensure that our voice is heard. Be ready to act quickly, speak loudly, and fight for your career and the health care freedoms your patients deserve.

[Signed by the President and Chair of the Board of the SCMA]

Wow. They must be practicing in paradise down there in South Carolina. No problems, everybody's insured, getting great preventive and chronic care, nobody goes bankrupt from health care expenses, etc. Maybe we all should move there. Because, you know, in the rest of the country we have ridiculous bureaucracies, rules, and non-physicians telling us what we can do and who we can see and what we can charge already, only they are our private health insurance companies.

But here is the money quote, "Consider what it will be like to be reimbursed for all of your patients at levels significantly less than current Medicare. " And that' really what it boils down to for so many, doesn't it? And besides, the answer to this question is that, if I don't have to hire a team of staff to fight with PRIVATE insurers to get reimbursed, to get prior approval, to jump through all of their hoops, maybe that reimbursement would result in a higher net reimbursement. And at least Medicare doesn't tell my patients whether they can see a physician because he's not on the right panel.

SCMA, what is the solution? Or aren't there any problems with the health care system in South Carolina.

Maybe they're still all practicing in Mayberry in the 1950's, but for the rest of us, we need to fix this broken system!

I ranted further over at dailykos...

Wow. This is not about healthcare reform with these people. These are like the Japanese soldiers found on islands 20 years after WW II, still fighting against the Yankees. They are opposing a Soviet medical gulag, entirely a figment of their imaginations and deep paranoia. Lively debate, eh?

But, to the letter's substance, and frankly, its' ignorance.

Nationalized, or singe payer, if that's what they mean, is pretty much off the table according to the guys in charge of the process like Baucus. It would be nice to have the momentum for that, but although there are vocal supporters at the grass roots level, the powers that be will not hear of it. But sadly, I doubt they even know what they mean when they say "nationalized." I am sure they have some conceptual bogey man system hybrid of the UK, Canada, and the old Soviet Union in their heads, but I am equally certain they have not spent more than 10 minutes actually learning any comparative health care, even bothered to investigate the systems in Germany, France, Australia and elsewhere.

"The deck is stacked against us." Is that against patients, physicians, insurance companies, who? Who is the deck stacked against?

"We've been told to sit in the corner..." Really? The message I've heard from Congress and the White House is that they value and want physician input. Maybe they don't want bat-shit crazy input, but they want input.

"The same people who have run Medicare into insolvency..." Um, that would fall quite largely on the shoulders of physicians. We have abdicated our role in shaping health care policy and controlling spending and reducing unwarranted and dangereous practice variation and having realistic end-of-life discussions with our patients and so on. We have also not called BS on the private insurers who steal health care dollars in the name of private enterprise and we have taken the money of Pharma for ou meetings and lunches and pretended they were spending all that money on R & D and not on recruiting cheerleaders. Literally recruiting cheerleaders.
But I'm with them on the Medicaid thing.

"The federal government is kicking us down the road toward indentured servitude." Seriously? Don't you guys have private health insurance companies in South Carolina? But really, this letter is not about health care, this is a stale ideology in its last throes.

"Physicians have been offered a seat at the table so long as we sit still with our hands folded in our laps and keep our mouths shut. "
Again, one has to have reasonable views to expect to be listened to seriously Foaming at the mouth like Zell Miller and Sean Hannity does not invite reasoned discussion. But listen, all of the physician supporters of single payer have much more to gripe about than the SCMA. At least organized medicine is participating in discussions, while PNHP has to have a major grass roots insurrection just to get invited to the White House photo-op. If anybody has the right to gripe about exclusion, it's the progressives, not the conservatives.

"The leadership of the South Carolina Medical Association senses the anger and the building resentment and confusion that physicians are currently experiencing." I expect this is true. SC represents a far more conservative population than most states (it's in the top 10 most red states), and so their phsyicains likely are more conservative as well. So, fine, make your case, but we will not sit quietly by and let you screw up the best chance for health care reform we've had in this country's history.

The final line about fighting "for your career and the health care freedoms your patients deserve." Again, maybe I'm practicing in a dark dystopic bit of America, but around here, that ship has sailed. Our patients, even the insured ones, have little choice in doctors or hospitals. They only go to whom and where their plan allows. No "freedom" there. And our careers? Whose careers? Your primary care physicians careers? Really? I'll let my colleagues decide who you're really looking out for. My bet is that you're looking out for your failed ideology, not for physicians or patients.

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