On July 16th, the American Medical Association endorsed the House Healthcare Reform Bill. Since then over 10,000 US physicians have used Sermo to voice their position on the Bill. 94% do not support the bill, and 95% state that the AMA does not speak for them with its endorsement (see full survey results and comments). The numbers are astonishing, almost as astonishing as the fact that none--not one--of the three topics that physicians state are the most important for comprehensive healthcare reform are even addressed in the Bill at all: malpractice reform, limiting impact of third party payors on the doctor patient relationship, and evening the playing field between doctors and third party payors.
It took the AMA less than 36 hours to endorse a 1,200-page bill that seasoned legal scholars are describing as "puzzling". It is a complex document that touches almost every aspect of the healthcare system except, perhaps, the ones that can have a material impact on cost savings. While the Bill does nothing to address ballooning administrative costs that are thought to consume 15-40 cents of every healthcare dollar, the bill does protect the AMA's proprietary CPT codes and will lead to a windfall in revenue that the AMA gets for licensing these codes to insurance companies and hospitals. With less than 15% of revenue now coming from physicians, one doesn't have to look far to see who the AMA is truly advocating for in this decision to endorse the Healthcare Bill. It's the AMA.
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First posted to the Sermo physician community on July 17, 2009:
From the Founder: Sermo Physicians Respond to AMA Endorsement of HC Bill
Congressional Leaders and Media Call Upon Sermo Physicians to Comment on AMA Endorsement of House Bill
Yesterday, the AMA publicly endorsed the House Healthcare Bill. In its current form, the bill fails to address any of the major issues that physicians have consistently voiced and demonstrates the tremendous risk of physicians not having a voice in the current healthcare debate. Sermo has issued a press release refuting the endorsement of the bill.
Today, the Sermo community has been asked by the media and members of Congress to join the healthcare debate as a voice for US physicians. Please take a moment to vote and comment on what issues you see as most critical for healthcare reform.
Here's how your voice will be heard:
• Sermo will be issuing another press release detailing the results of the survey
• Daniel Palestrant has been invited to meet with Congressional leaders in Washington, D.C. to present the Sermo community's voice in the healthcare debate.
• Your colleagues on Sermo are organizing a grass roots movement for physicians to take coordinated action to block the further destruction of our profession through the Take a Stand. Tie a Knot campaign.
After you have voted and commented, it is critical that you engage your colleagues and ask them to participate as well. Together we can ensure that the voice of dedicated, practicing physicians is accurately represented in this debate. Our strength is in our numbers.
Daniel Palestrant, MD
Founder & CEO
Sermo, Inc.
AMA - AMA Physicians Work for Health Care Reform
Don't base your opinion on what doctors think. Is it possible they have a different agenda? Use your head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_Doctors'_Strike
: In Hospital Deaths from Medical Errors at 195,000 per Year USA
Litigation / Medical Malpractice Article Date: 09 Aug 2004 -
An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records that was released today by HealthGrades, the healthcare quality company.
"The HealthGrades study shows that the IOM report may have underestimated the number of deaths due to medical errors, and, moreover, that there is little evidence that patient safety has improved in the last five years," said Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' vice president of medical affairs .
"The equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people are dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S."
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php - Cached - Similar
But what we need is tort reform and caps on malpractice?
LOL! LOL! LOL!!!!!!
Why is it that when the issue of medical malpractice comes up, the doctors and the Republicans never EVER propose preventing malpractice in the first place? It's always about caps on damages after the malpractice has occurred.
And of course they refer to malpractice suits as "junk lawsuits." How would they like to go in for a gall bladder surgery and wake up to find both their legs had been amputated? Would that be a junk lawsuit? They would like a world where such a person cannot sue at all for such a thing, like in the military. This actually happened recently to one poor airman. He may get a few hundred dollars a month from the military. How's that for caps? See:
http://kdka.com/health/medical.mistake.military.2.1092872.html
by Tim Foley
Published March 17, 2009
Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in 2004 conceded that the legislation for tort reform, even if it instituted a federal cap, would barely dent health care costs: "Malpractice costs amounted to an estimated $24 billion in 2002, but that figure represents less than 2 percent of overall health care spending.
Thus, even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent [emphasis mine], and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small ."
They were even reluctant to say that a cap would even make a dent on defensive medicine. What about the access question - the notion that medical malpractice causes physicians to flee states without caps to states with caps? Turns out the only states that did not see an increase in the number of practicing physicians between 2003 and 2008 were Alaska, Georgia, Montana and Utah - all states with liability caps. A 2005 study in Health Affairs suggested that if we look county-by-county, we would see an increase of doctors in rural areas where states have caps - by all of 3-4%
. healthcare.change.org/.../avoid_tort_reform_in_the_health_care_bill_at_all_costs -
Fact are funny things and the almost never reflect Repug reality.
Whats up with that?
U.S. group sees little progress on medical errors
Tue May 19, 2009 6:34pm CHICAGO (Reuters) -
Despite a decade of promises, little has been done to fix the problem of preventable medical errors that kill nearly 98,000 people in the United States each year, a consumer group said on Tuesday
.
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, said lawmakers largely have failed to enact patient safety reforms recommended by a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine or IOM that found that medical errors cost the United States $17 billion to $29 billion a year
. "There is little evidence to suggest that the number of people dying from medical harm has dropped since the IOM first warned about these deadly mistakes a decade ago," Lisa McGiffert of the Consumers Union said in a statement. "That means a million lives and billions of dollars have been lost over the past 10 years because our health care system failed to adopt key reforms recommended by the IOM to protect patients." www.reuters.com/article/.../idUSTRE54I6U320090519 - Cached - Similar
USA Leads the World ... In Medical Errors
Taking The Pulse Of Health Care Systems: Experiences Of Patients With Health Problems In Six Countries
by Cathy Schoen, Robin Osborn, Phuong Trang Huynh, Michelle Doty, Kinga Zapert, Jordon Peugh, and Karen Davis
Overall, the findings reveal strikingly similar deficiencies in care in many areas. Medical errors and failures to coordinate care, especially during transitions, emerge as shared concerns, along with missed opportunities to elicit patients’ views and engage chronically ill patients in their care. However, the study also finds sizable differences across countries.
The United States often stands out with high medical errors and inefficient care and has the worst performance for access/ cost barriers and financial burdens. In contrast, Germany often ranks high for timely access. On a composite variable including three types of errors—medication or medical mistakes or lab errors—U.S. patients were the most likely and U.K patients the least likely to report errors.
Driven up by relatively high medication and lab or test errors, at 34 percent, the spread between the United States and the countries with the lowest error rates was wide as well as statistically significant. Yet in all countries, more than one of five sicker adults reported at least one of the three types of errors, with patients often reporting more than one type of error
.
WERE #1
WERE #1
WERE #1
Wait a minute.......
It's not based on what is reasonable or good public policy.
First, we need to reform the political system, then we can get reasonable public policy in all areas- financial, health, transportation, housing, foreign policy, etc.
Hopefully I won't get sick until I'm eligible for Medicare.
http://kdka.com/health/medical.mistake.military.2.1092872.html
Here's the best solution I know of for malpractice. How about making each doctor in each town (or each hospital or each clinic, etc) pay his proportionate share of the malpractice damages caused by every other doctor in the group? On its face it sounds unfair but the good doctors would then have an incentive to cull the bad doctors from their ranks. The good docs know who the bad ones are. In addition of course, the docs themselves would have to have the right to yank the licenses of the bad docs.
Yes, we need malpractice reform as well.
http://kdka.com/health/medical.mistake.military.2.1092872.html
How about making each doctor in each town (or each hospital or each clinic, etc) pay his proportionate share of the malpractice damages caused by every other doctor in the group? On its face it sounds unfair but the good doctors would then have an incentive to cull the bad doctors from their ranks. That is the best cure for malpractice I can think of. The good docs know who the bad ones are. In addition of course, the docs themselves should have the right to yank the licenses of the bad docs.
BTW, some doctors, those who see their patients as revenue streams, are a big part of health care inflation. This article by a Harvard doctor is a must read:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
With doctors we have to guess.
Should I guess with you?
The last thing we need to do is throw more money at the
health care insurers so what about single-payer?
How does it go?
There can be no "status quo ante"?
Any bill endorsed by the AMA should be dimissed out of hand.
If you don't know why, we will never get a good bill, even just a stepping stone.