President to Doctors: ‘Don’t Get Too Excited Yet’

by BMCWrites | June 15, 2009 at 02:51 pm

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“Don’t get too excited yet.”

Delivered to an audience of doctors and other medical professionals at the Annual Conference of the American Medical Association in Chicago this morning, those five words are perhaps the best advice ever given to medical doctors by President Barack Obama.

Delivered soon after the halfway point of his near-hour-long speech in favor of a government-run health care system, the five words of truth are shown below in boldface to provide context for how they were used in the speech delivered at the Hyatt Regency:

“Together, if we take all these steps, I am convinced we can bring spending down, bring quality up; we can save hundreds of billions of dollars on health care costs while making our health care system work better for patients and doctors alike. And when we align the interests of patients and doctors, then we’re going to be in a good place.

“Now, I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they’re constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits. I recognize that. (Applause.) Don’t get too excited yet. Now, I understand some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable. That’s a real issue. (Applause.) Now, just hold on to your horses here, guys. (Laughter.) I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating caps on malpractice awards — (boos from some in audience) — (laughter) — which I personally believe can be unfair to people who’ve been wrongfully harmed.

“But I do think we need to explore a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first; how to let doctors focus on practicing medicine; how to encourage broader use of evidence-based guidelines. I want to work with the AMA so we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine that reinforces our current system, and shift to a system where we are providing better care, simply — rather than simply more treatment.”

Don’t get too excited yet? I doubt seriously that many doctors have any intention of doing that.

For the full transcript of President Obama’s AMA address, courtesy of the White House, click here.

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I have copied and pasted my comments in Politisite's post below. I think they are also appropriate here.

Bloomberg reports that this Health Care Reform will take 600 Billion in additional taxes and Obama is already shifting 500 Billion from Medicare and Medicaid.

One should look at this with skepticism. There are many examples of Universal Health Care around the world. None of them are perfect but are workable. The danger here is that this is Health Care Reform without a lot of thought. President Obama wants a bill on his desk by July 31st.

Health Care in Canada is administered by the Provinces and what it delivers is slightly different in each jurisdiction. Basic Health Care is mandated by the Canada Health Act.

Just today there was a newsclip on local Alberta news that accused the Alberta Government of having a hiring freeze on nurses. The nurses union vowed to vigorously fight the Alberta Government.

Since the beginning of this year they have taken sex change surgery off the eligibility list. Recently they revamped benefits for Seniors and the list will go on and on.

My point is to carefully study health care, implement the good and first and foremost let the States administer it.

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President to Doctors: ‘Don’t Get Too Excited Yet’

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