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The lobby for hospitals, the American Hospital Association (AHA) headed by Richard Umbdenstock, contacted heads of hospitals across the land and urged them to “push back” against President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform. Obama decided that he could come up with part of the one trillion dollars he will need over the next decade to pay for healthcare for all by cutting payments to hospitals by 200 billion dollars.
Richard Umbdenstock of AHA makes his move to push back against healthcare reform
Don’t get me started on hospital administrators. I wouldn’t trust these guys to organize my closets let alone my hospital. I spent a lot of time trying to organize hospital administrators that they could make a lot of money expanding positron emission tomography (PET) for diagnosis of cancer when I was Director of our hospital’s PET Center and they just looked at me funny no many how many business plans and charts and graphs I showed them. Now ten years later they are making millions but not thanks to the “leadership” but someone at the second tiere. One of the guys had a poster of U of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant on his wall. Hardly an inspiring example of intellectualism. I don’t think these guys have a clue about what goes on their hospitals. Read my post on McAllen TX how the admins had no clue they had the most expensive healthcare in the country. Maybe they should get on Twitter.
Oh, speaking of Twitter Obama is addressing the AMA as we speak and you can follow is here on twitter where someone is transcribing it in two sentences bitties. Hasn’t said much specific yet other than everyone gets to keep their doctors if they like him but it is clear that he is trying to horse trade with physicians so that they won’t cut him off at the knees.
Our erstwhile friend Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) says that he doesn’t think Obama’s healthcare reform plans are “realistic”. Well we say how realistic is it to sit back while a healthcare system that gobbles up a fifth of our gross national product continues to grow exponentially and hope that some kind of Deus Ex Machina will save our economy from ultimately collapsing under the weight?Meanwhile Richard’s partners in greed and self-interest, Nancy Nielsen MD of the American Medical Association (AMA), Billy Tauzin of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer’s Association (PhRMA) and Karen Ignagni of the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) don’t care either if the economy collapses. They are cheering him on.
Nancy Nielsen (AMA), Billy Tauzin (PhRMA), Karen Ignagni (AHIP)
Hey! Dont’ forget our mascot, David Nexon of the American Medical Technology Association (AMTA).
David Nexon, AMTA. Go team!
Maybe it’s time we did a little “pushing back”, like pushing back against the AMA for their greedy and selfish opposition to healthcare reform, or against the medical establishment for the huge disparities in regional medical spending without differences in care that demonstrate the gaming of the system to make money.
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Great post, Doug.
All for profit industries are against health care reform, obviously, including MCOs, pharma and med device, and so forth.
Also, doctors, primary care perhaps in particular, are overtly demoralized due to this septic health care system that limits their ability to provide quality and necessary care to their patients. Most of these doctors are employed by health care systems to cover their overhead and malpractice.
In a way, such doctors have become salesmen- focusing on making sure they see the most patients in a day as possible in order to remain economically viable. I develop nausea and a migraine as I type this…..
[...] which became highly influential in the year’s legislative debate. The whole hospital industry quickly pushed back against the perception, and against reform generally, while the AMA came out for the final [...]