Doctors and health reform: maybe they do stand for health!

The new GOP health plan, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), aka “Trumpcare”, has crashed to defeat. The President, who pushed hard for it, looks like his greatest nightmare, a “loser”. It is worth thinking, however, about who opposed it. In Congress it was Democrats and (the few) moderate Republicans and very right-wing Republicans are against it, for different reasons. From outside government the response was pretty negative, with a 17% approval rating (amazing they could still think they could pass it!). Far-right “conservatives” thought that AHCA was too much like Obamacare in that it actually provides some federal support for some people, and  they don’t believe in the government ever helping anyone, except maybe themselves and their friends. (Oh, yes, and fabulously rich people. They deserve a lot of help.) The criticism from most of the rest of the universe (to say “the left” would be inaccurate, since it includes many quite a bit right of center, since, in fact, “Obamacare” started life as a Republican plan) was mostly because it would be a disaster for health coverage for Americans. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) were that 24 million people would lose their health insurance, that access to care would be more and more limited, especially for the middle class and poor, and that costs would rise for patients exponentially. Also that the public health and preventive health infrastructure would be gutted and many of our advances in those areas lost.

The main “positive” in the CBO’s projection was that it would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over 10 years. This was only because it shifted costs to others, to states and employers and individuals. Those who could not pay with money would pay with their health and sometimes their lives. While, as I have pointed out (‘We have a bill! The GOP's plan to cut taxes on the rich and health care for the rest of us, March 16, 2017) many would have lost their insurance because of cuts in subsidies through the exchanges, the biggest impact would have been through the loss of Medicaid. This is clearly explained by Dr. Daniel Derksen, a family physician and director of the University of Arizona’s Office of Rural Health in a video on MedPage Today.

Among the many groups criticizing the draconian cuts in health care (as well as taxes on the rich) are almost all of the major hospital associations (including the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Hospital Association, and others), and physicians’ groups, most notably the American Medical Association (AMA) as well as most specialty societies including the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American College of Physicians (ACP), as well as many others. They have been joined by the major nursing organizations and by patient advocacy groups. It should not be surprising, I suppose, that most of these groups would be critical of such a devastating attack on health care for Americans, but if it isn’t, it is at least a relief. The AMA is important in part because of its major role in opposing most historical expansions of health care access by the government, including President Truman’s attempt to get a national health insurance program (where they were successful) and President Johnson’s creation of Medicare and Medicaid (where they were not).

Of course, not all health providers and certainly not all physicians opposed the AHCA’s changes. MedPage Today published quotes from a number of physicians, and some were quite supportive; Darrell S. Rigel, a dermatologist at NYU, for example, said “It looks like it is a significant improvement over the ACA [the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare].” The most noteworthy physician advocate for the AHCA and Trumpcare was naturally Tom Price, MD, the Secretary of Health and Human services. As I discussed before his appointment (“Trump, Price, and Verma: Bad news for the health of Americans, including Trump voters, December 3, 2016), Secretary Price, as a congressman from Georgia was a leader in the Tea Party caucus and an opponent of ACA or any other program to expand health coverage to Americans. Another recent voice to both support AHCA and channel the administration and GOP’s contempt for regular people is Rep. Roger Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend, KS who is the Representative from Kansas’ “Big First” district. Dr. Marshall told the Washington Post that “the poor just don’t want health care”. He kind of walked back those remarks later, but his analysis is telling:

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’ ” Marshall said in response to a question about Medicaid, which expanded under Obamacare to more than 30 states. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” He added that “morally, spiritually, socially,” the poor, including the homeless, “just don’t want health care….The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging; I’m just saying socially that’s where they are,” he told STAT, a website focused on health-care coverage. “So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [to] the ER.”

I may not be the best person to comment on his bizarre interpretation of the Gospel, but I can say that for many of us the challenges that poor people face in just getting through their lives are reasons why we need to make health care accessible, not reasons to just write them off. I also wish that I could say that, in my experience, physicians with attitudes like those of Price and Marshall are rare, but sadly they are not. To some degree, there are differences by specialty, with primary care physicians and psychiatrists more likely to support government-involved health care and even single payer plans than surgeons (including orthopedists). I am sure that at least in part this difference is driven by income; while all physicians have relatively high incomes compared to most Americans (top 10%), some specialties, including orthopedics (at the top), radiology, cardiology, surgery, and dermatology make much more; the mean reported income for orthopedists, about $467K (which seems low to me based on those I know) is about the cutoff for the top 1%. When a friend of mine (who later became a surgeon) was on his surgical rotation in medical school, he was impressed by all the talk in the surgeon’s lounge about the “Big Board” – until he found out they meant the stock market, not the board listing upcoming surgeries! And primary care doctors are not immune; when I lived in Texas one family physician regularly railed against the liberal government spending our money. One day, however, his attacks were on delays in payments to doctors from Medicare. Umm…

Doctors are, of course, like other people. Their perspectives vary widely, with most being caring and some caring mostly for themselves. My family physician colleague’s self-centered view is not so different from that of those Trump voters who are now against the AHCA because they see that their benefits are being cut; see “Trump budget cuts put struggling Americans on edge”, NY Times March 18, 2017. The authors cite a retired nurse with lung cancer whose heat was cut off in the middle of the winter; she was rescued by a heating subsidy funded by the federal government and likely to be cut. “I understand what he’s trying to do, but I think he’s just not stopping to think that there are people caught in the middle he is really going to hurt,” she said. Somehow, I suppose, she thought that the cuts would only be to other people…

So, while it is true that doctors, like others, often share the perspectives of their class, and callously disregard or rationalize opposition to ensuring health care for everyone, they often do understand the situations their patients are in and serve as advocates for them. In 2001, the AMA passed its “Declaration of Professional Responsibility: Medicine’s Contract with Humanity”.  It includes the following “Advocate for social, economic, educational, and political changes that ameliorate suffering and contribute to human well-being.”  The AMA was on the right side of the AHCA fight. I hope that most doctors agree with, and even practice, that principle.

I hope Tom Price and Roger Marshall are aberrant exceptions.