Peter Carmel and Bruce Malone: The TT Interview
American Medical Association President Peter Carmel, a New Jersey-based pediatric neurosurgeon, and Texas Medical Association President Bruce Malone, an Austin orthopedic surgeon, sat down with The Texas Tribune to talk about the Medicare cuts that physicians face, Texas' decision to challenge federal health reform in court, and state lawmakers' efforts to curb abortions and slash funding to Planned Parenthood. An edited transcript follows.
TT: For the last decade, the U.S. government has been spending more on Medicare, the federal health insurer for the elderly, than the current funding formula allows — and threatening to dramatically cut doctors’ reimbursement rates to ...
Comments (3)
Barbara Madera via Texas Tribune on Facebook
A proposed amendment for gender parity. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/mandatory-ultrasound-bill-virginia-anti-abortion_n_1242627.html?ref=politics
Michael Jensvold via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The rhetoric of the opposition to this has so far been very weak, along the lines of "gee it must have something to do with infringing the first amendment". Maybe we have to let some stupid laws stand, to remind people that democracy is not automatic, and voting still matters.
Phillip Baker
Dr. Carmel is right about those having the "rocks" getting medical care, and those without don't. But it is disingenuous to suggest this would be anything new. We have rationed health care in the country on the basis of ability to pay for as long as I can remember. But then, I grew up on the poorer end of the spectrum. Medical care was always a dreaded threat to the household income. Nothing has changed. Even after practicing as a PA for about 20 years, when I had to quit work because of a disability, I could not afford medical care anymore. Usually I could just treat myself and get by, but I had to refuse needed procedures. I did eventually get Medicare, but finding a doctor who will take me is getting harder all the time. It's high time we made every member of Congress enroll in Medicare as their primary insurance. Then this foolishness of using Medicare reimbursement rates as a prop for political theater would end. And I suspect opposition in Congress to much of the health care reform already passed would evaporate,too.
Our leaders are fond of claiming we have the best medical care system in the world. True, but academic if you can't get into it, as millions of Americans cannot.
Considering the Republican obsession with protecting business, I find it odd that they seem to think a medical practice is anything but a business, small to huge. Doctors sell a service to customers at a price. That's a business.
(But doctors do themselves no favors by piously claiming to have no involvement in the business end. Every practitioner should be aware of the financial impact offered medical choices on their patients. The cost for the use of lab work and procedures for medicolegal reasons can severely damage a person's financial health without adding much useful medical information. Yet most doctors do not bother to give that information out before the patient must choose what to do. Why? What other business sells its services/products without disclosing the cost first?)