Doctors Treated to Abuse at White House and by Democrats in Congress.
By El Marco, 3/10/2010 – Americans recall how Obama amazed the nation with his straw-man characterizations of doctors who perform unnecessary amputations and tonsillectomies out of greed. What people don’t know is how doctors have been mistreated behind closed doors by the White House and by Democrats in Congress.
Here are two stories that show the kind of abuse doctors have been subjected to in Obama’s Washington. The first sordid tale was reported by Matt Latimer at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. I will follow excerpts of that story with an El Marco exclusive peek at how one group of doctors who support Obama was subjected to Rahm Emanuel’s beastly behavior in the White House. But first here’s Latimer’s account of doctors treated badly by congressional Democrats.
Attempting to enact his big-government health care scheme, President Obama and his supporters frequently claimed that a “majority” of doctors supported his health-care plans. When the American Medical Association – which had opposed HillaryCare – signed onto Obama’s plan last year, the organization seemed to make the President’s case. Most people assumed that the AMA represented most of the doctors in the country. But in fact, the AMA represents less than 20 percent of all physicians in the United States. And yet as the organization’s leadership moved more to the left, it held a near monopoly on media attention on issues pertaining to public health. No longer.
As the AMA has become increasingly politicized in recent years – issuing a statement in support of climate change, for example, in 2008 – a new group of doctors has risen to challenge them.Docs4PaitientCare: Founded by Dr. Hal Scherz, a prominent Atlanta physician, the group of doctors expressed concern that like so many other professional groups, the AMA’s leadership have been thoroughly “Washingtonized” – caring more about the pleadings of other lobbyists on K Street, White House invitations and Capitol Hill committee appearances than the professions they are supposed to represent. As doctors have taken a battering over several decades from insurance companies, HMOS, and government agencies, Scherz says the AMA was a bystander. “As the insurance companies become more and more impossible and government intrusion keeps growing, we’ve seen our delivery of care to our patients compromised and our incomes decrease,” he said. But it was the AMA’s support for ObamaCare that really troubled Scherz and others in his field.Many doctors run small businesses and by nature are entrepreneurial. Why then, he wondered, would the AMA favor ObamaCare’s regulatory and taxation burden? Why would they want a multitude of government panels interfering with the decisions doctors usually make with their patients about care and treatment? Recognizing that the AMA was compromised, Scherz decided to organize his own group in opposition to the Obama plan.
Joyce Lovett MD addresses Doctors for Patient Care event in Washington.
Wearing their scrubs and white jackets, the doctors drew attention as they walked the halls of congress and spoke at rallies on Capitol Hill. Often just showing up in the offices of members of the House and Senate, they would manage to get appointments with the members themselves or key staff members.Joyce Lovett MD, an African American female pediatrician, got the doctors into a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus. A debate opened up over the health care plan and soon the doctors were text-messaging their colleagues visiting other offices around the capitol for reinforcements. As the room began filling up, the doctors, doing well in the back and forth of debate, seemed to be changing some minds. At that point, a worried Black Caucus leader and diehard partisan, John Conyers, broke up the meeting, saying the doctors were more interested in embarrassing the first black president than in achieving real reform. Unused to this sort of political attack, the astonished doctors told other caucus members how they felt after taking time from their practices and patients to come all the way to Washington only to hear a member of Congress insinuate they were racists. One caucus member privately dismissed Conyers’ “old ways of thinking,” suggesting that the CBC might be ready for fresh, and more innovative, leadership.
Playing the race card against any American, black or white, who criticizes Obama is part of a strategic Democrat/MSM assault on free speech and dissent. This has become a standard Democrat debating tactic, and is but one example of how liberals are unwilling to compete in the arena of ideas.
With a flurry of recent headlines shedding light on Rahm “Dead Fish” Emanuel’s aggressive personality, a conversation I had last week with a doctor in New Jersey took on added relevance. The doctor, whom I have known since the late ’70s, related to me an incident told to him by a medical colleague who is a large financial supporter of Obama. A supporter, that is, until his recent invitation to the White House knocked the lenses out of his rose-colored glasses.
He told how he was invited as part of a group of other Obama stalwarts in the medical profession for what he mistakenly believed was an opportunity to offer input to the President’s ongoing health care initiative.
The colleague related how this group of doctors was seated in the White House and waited patiently as Obama’s TelePrompTers were assembled in front of them. When, after a long wait, Obama finally appeared, he delivered one of his trademark TelePrompTer performances lasting about five minutes. Obama thanked the doctors, via TelePrompTer, for their support, and then left the room. This is where it gets interesting.
Rahm Emanuel was left behind to face the doctors. When the doctors related to Emanuel that they thought they had been invited not merely to support Obama, but to advocate for doctors and patients, Rahm exploded with a verbal tirade. He was described as rude and abusive as he proclaimed that the doctors had been invited for one reason only, to show support for Obamacare. He made it clear that they were expected to be advocates for the administration’s policies.
The entire experience was profoundly disturbing to the doctor who experienced Emanuel’s bullying outburst. When he returned to his home state, he no longer supported Obama, who he now saw in a new light. He now considers Obama to be a “complete phony”. As for Rahm Emanuel, he vehemently described him as “a very dangerous personality” and “a dangerous menace to our country”
So doctors who oppose Obamacare run the risk of being called racists and docs who support Obamacare are told to shut-up and tow the line. Hows that hopey and changey thing going America?
Why Pretend? Put Madoff in charge of Obamacare! …. Obamadoffcare
When the Obama White House stages a media event using doctors as props, the intent is to create the illusion of support from the medical profession as a whole. One has to wonder if the doctors story cited above gives us a glimpse of the AstroTurf process for vetting Docs to appear at Obama events.
On Oct 5, 2009 one such Rose Garden event was staged and the NY Post published some embarrassing facts and photos:
President Obama rolled out the red carpet – and handed out doctors’ white coats as well, just so nobody missed his hard-sell health-care message.In a heavy-handed attempt at reviving support for health-care reform, the White House orchestrated a massive photo op to buttress its claim that front-line physicians support Obama.A sea of 150 white-coated doctors, all enthusiastically supportive of the president and representing all 50 states, looked as if they were at a costume party as they posed in the Rose Garden before hearing Obama’s pitch for the Democratic overhaul bills moving through Congress.The physicians, all invited guests, were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image. But some docs apparently forgot, failing to meet the White House dress code by showing up in business suits or dresses.So the White House rustled up white coats for them and handed them to suited physicians who had taken seats in the sun-splashed lawn area.All this to provide a visual counter to complaints from doctors that pending legislation is bad news for the medical profession. NY Post
What the media won’t tell you is that some of the doctors were former members of the “Doctors for Obama” organization. Oh, but it’s renamed after the election “Doctors for America”, which is part of “Organizing for America”, which was renamed from “Obama for America”, which was/is Obama’s campaign machine.
One of the Obama administrations early accomplishments was making the word AstroTurf a commonly understood term in America. Previously AstroTurf was an obscure term like “teabagger” known mainly by the small number of the liberal-left who were practitioners of it. Long associated with Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod, AstroTurf as now employed by Obama’s White House is something voters are learning to recognize and reject.
This is what White House AstroTurf looks like out on the street.
