President Obama’s plan for a government-run health care system hit a major snag this week as a Washington Post-ABC News nationwide poll revealed that support for the plan is waning. According to the survey, only 49% of Americans support the president’s plan for healthcare reform, a percentage lower than it has ever been.
In addition, America’s governors voiced their deep concern with the plan. “I think the governors would all agree that what we don’t want from the federal government is unfunded mandates,” said Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, the incoming chair of the National Governors Association. “We can’t have the Congress impose requirements that we are forced to absorb beyond our capacity to do so.”
Ignoring the wishes of the general public, the governors and perhaps many of its own members, the American Medical Association (“AMA”) recently offered its support for the legislation, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” currently under consideration. The AMA’s latest endorsement is a complete 180 from its position expressed just over a month ago, when it wrote in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee: “The AMA does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.”
Countering the AMA’s endorsement of government-run health care is a former president of the organization, who is currently the spokesperson for newly formed organization called the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights (CPPR). CPPR is opposed to a so-called “public option” and is working to ensure that patients and doctors are in charge of making health care decisions, not the government.
“Today, more than 253 million Americans have health insurance, and the vast majority like their coverage and their doctors,” wrote Dr. Donald Palmisano, CPPR’s spokesman and former AMA president, in the Capital Hill newspaper Roll Call. “What policymakers need to do is fix what’s broken, not create a whole new system that will end up adversely affecting the hundreds of millions of Americans who are happy with our current system. While most agree that we need to find ways to expand access to health care for the uninsured, there are ways to accomplish that without expanding government’s role in the lives of patients or their doctors.”
Recently, Dr. Palmisano joined CFIF’s Renee Giachino to discuss CPPR, why policymakers shouldn’t support legislation that will diminish care to 90 percent of our population, and why it’s wrong under President Obama’s plan to take health care decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and give it to the government.
What follows is the interview originally heard on "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense With Commonsense" on WEBY 1330 AM, Northwest Florida's Talk Radio…[Listen to the interview here.]