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Tucker Carlson: The
Face of American Anesthesiologists
This piece appeared in Anesthesiology
News
Author: Samuel Metz
Date: 02/01/10
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When the American Society of
Anesthesiologists invited Tucker Carlson to address its 2009 annual
meeting, we elevated politics over substance. As Mr. Carlson, a
flamboyant conservative commentator, took the dais, we linked our own
dismay regarding the financial implications of health care legislation
with widespread aversion to reform generally.
That connection is bad for business.
Especially our business. Here's why.
Unlike members of the ASA, most
Americans are neither anesthesiologists nor physicians. And many are
fighting desperately to protect themselves and their families from
financial catastrophe. When we embrace (as conservative commentators
like Mr. Carlson appear to do) the private insurance industry as our
closest ally, the very industry responsible for our health care crisis,
we alienate too many of our citizens, including many of our patients.
Make no mistake about it. Health care
legislation enshrining Medicare reimbursement rates as a national
standard will devastate our profession. Yet we must appreciate the huge
gulf between rejecting Medicare reimbursement rates specifically and
rejecting all change entirely.
And change is coming. The juggernaut of
reform rolls onward. Perhaps anesthesiologists won a victory in
defeating expansion of Medicare reimbursement rates. But how long until
the next Congress attempts expansion? And the Congress after that?
The ASA unites us as anesthesiologists
with a professional stake in health care reform. We are more than
anesthesiologists, however. We are heads of family, taxpayers, patients
ourselves on occasion, and socially responsible members of society. All
these roles place demands upon us just as they do on our patients, and
every citizen.
Mad As Hell Doctors, of which I am a
founding member, merges our goals as physicians with those of other
citizens who are not physicians, or anesthesiologists, or even employed.
Despite the attention-getting title, we are not the lunatic fringe.
Physicians for a National Health Program (16,000 members) and the
National Physicians Alliance (20,000 members - with an anesthesiologist
as President-elect no less), all forcefully advocate universal
cost-effective health care to benefit both physicians and patients.
No country in recorded history has ever
provided universal cost-effective health care with the system we have in
the United States - that is, with an unregulated, free-market, private
insurance industry. And after 60 years of failure, the United States
remains the only nation still trying. It is no surprise we pay twice as
much for health care as the average industrialized nation, enjoy worse
care by almost every measure of public health, and are the laughing
stock of the civilized world. After all, where else do citizens go
bankrupt and lose their homes if they acquire the wrong disease, or the
less affluent die of preventable complications if they must buy food
instead of health care?
This is the country in which we live.
Health care reform, sooner or later, will discard private insurance as
the mainstay of our income. If we persist in protecting the very system
that leaves our families and government bereft of money and medical
care, we become featured headliners on the short list of every
Congressional committee looking for villains to pillory when reform
finally emerges.
Tucker Carlson may be a great speaker
and delightful person - perhaps the ideal selection to kick-start an
educationally intense meeting. But we serve our professional interests
better by avoiding colorful commentators who direct us into a losing
battle against the inevitable. Instead, we should lead health care
reform toward a system that benefits all citizens and not just colorful
commentators.
Protecting our profession requires
putting ourselves ahead of the reform movement, not sweeping up
afterwards. Anesthesiologists risk alienating patients, elected
officials, and even many of our colleagues when our public stand on
health care legislation is a general indictment of all reform. Our
interests as anesthesiologists are entirely consistent with our
interests as heads of family, as taxpayers, and as responsible members
of society. In fact, our interests as anesthesiologists are the same as
our patients - we want universal cost-effective health care.
That goal is good for business.
Especially ours.
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