Many physicians understood the dire consequences of the Obama proposals for their own patients. President Obama didn’t consult with them. But on Oct. 19, 2009, a group of highly regarded physicians assembled at the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York City. Here is what they had to say on the fundamental issues:
On Treating the Elderly
Dr. Seymour Cohen, oncologist, named to “America’s Top Doctors”: “When we went to medical school, people used to die at 66, 67 and 68. Medicare paid for two or three years. Social Security paid for two or three years. We’re the bad guys. We’re responsible for keeping people alive to 85. So we’re now going to try to change health care because people are living too long. It just doesn’t make very good sense to me.”
Shifting Resources From Specialty to Primary Care
Dr. Jeffrey Moses, interventional cardiologist, named to “America’s Top Doctors”: “If you have heart failure or heart attack or coronaries in general in the hospital you need to be treated by a cardiologist. Study after study shows that . . . when you have an illness and you want to have an accurate diagnosis and the most up-to-date and accurate treatment, you want a specialist.”
Patient Privacy
Dr. Samuel Guillory, ophthalmologist, refractive and orbital surgery, named to Castle Connolly’s “New York’s Top Doctors”: “We’re being asked by the executive branch . . . to break the code with patients and deliver all their records into electronic medical records. . . .”
Cost-Cutting Methods
Dr. David Fields, obstetrician and gynecologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York: “Government is in the process of duplicating everything that managed care did for the last 15 years that was reviled by everybody and which we fought very hard to overcome. . . . Capitation was the worst thing that ever happened to medical care.”
Dr. Tracy Pfeifer, plastic surgeon, former president, New York Regional Society of Plastic Surgeons: “When physicians graduate from medical school we take an oath, the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm to our patients. . . . These government programs that are being proposed I think are very scary in the sensethat physicians could be induced to violate the Hippocratic Oath.”
Dr. Joel Kassimir, dermatologist, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York: “We’re now being told by physicians advising the president that we take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously.”
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