Monday, December 21, 2009

We Are So Screwed II: AMA Supports Passage of Senate Healthcare Reform Bill

The old adage “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” applies here. The American Medical Association, or AMA has just announced that it supports the apparently soon-to-be-passed Senate healthcare reform bill, HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

This from the group that famously opposed passage of Medicare in 1965 by financing Operation Coffee Cup, a project that enlisted then screen actor, and host of Death Valley Days, Ronald Reagan to make a record meant to be played in neighborhood coffee meetings.

This record inspired former Governor Sarah Palin to repeat Reagan’s dire prediction first made on that record about finding “ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.”

This from the group that was part of a coalition of the unwilling, a coalition that successfully shot down healthcare reform back in the 90’s when the previous Democratic president tried to get meaningful healthcare reform passed.

This from the group that has been behind “reform” of medical malpractice laws in several states with the promise that should states, such as Texas, pass a law to put a cap on what a patient can collect in a medical malpractice suit, malpractice insurance premiums will drop resulting in a decrease in healthcare costs.

An effect no one has yet seen, not in Texas or anywhere else.

So now the AMA is solidly behind passage of the Senate bill, a bill recently amended in the wee hours of the morning today. The first medical doctors were Greeks, you know.

Another quote comes to mind, the words of Mae West who was thinking in a different context when she said it, but it is nevertheless appropriate here:

“It's not what I do, but the way I do it. It's not what I say, but the way I say it.”
We are so screwed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am confused. Do you really think President Obama is pleased with this? He sure is acting like it.

I had such high hopes that he truly would be a different type of president.

But so far he only seems concerned about getting re-elected. That's it.

Too bad.