Re: Some Anti-Reform Doctors Using Scare Tactics On Patients

On Sep 1, 4:27 pm, Jim Higgins <gordian...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Some Anti-Reform Doctors Using Scare Tactics On Patientshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/some-anti-reform-doctors_n_2...

Kelley McCahill took her 70-year-old mother to see a plastic surgeon
about having a cancerous growth removed from her nose last Thursday.

"If not the first sentence, the second sentence out of his mouth was,
'We can still get this done because Obamacare's not in place,'" McCahill
told the Huffington Post. She said that the doctor, in a casual and
jovial manner, repeatedly bashed President Obama's health care reform
agenda during the 15-minute consultation.

"I'm sitting between my mom and the doctor. I look down. I was literally
just wanting to melt," said McCahill, 40, who works as a drug counselor
in Chattanooga, Tenn. and describes herself as liberal. She bit her
tongue. "This is my mom's doctor and I don't want to offend him because
her care is in his hands."

Across the country, some doctors are using scare tactics to advocate
against health care reform, according to anecdotal reports from
Huffington Post readers who were asked to share their experiences.
Sometimes it happens right in the middle of examinations, and some
doctors whack their patients with the most outrageous claims of reform
opponents.

Doctors who support reform -- and there are plenty -- appear to be no
less likely to bring it up. There is no sign of an organized campaign
either way. For some doctors, it's just idle chit-chat. But ethicists
warn that doctors should not abuse their position to propagate a
political viewpoint, much less to frighten trusting patients with talk
of "death panels" and withholding treatment from grandma.

Doctors speak to their patients from a position of authority, and people
generally want to maintain a positive relationship with the person in
charge of their treatment and medication, explained Arthur Caplan,
director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Caplan said there's nothing wrong with doctors providing information on
proposed reforms or expressing political opinions, but they should be
careful what they say to patients under their care because of the
imbalance in the relationship.

"The trick is: Do not coerce, intimidate, or be seen as pressuring your
patients. It is risky to be proselytizing patients in the office,
because while you may not intend to coerce them, they may hear it that
way," said Caplan. "If you feel like you can't speak back, respond and
argue, you're being coerced. If somebody says, 'I felt like I had no
choice but to sit there and listen,' they're being coerced."

Joe Dorsey felt like he had to sit there and listen when he went to see
a new doctor three weeks ago for prostate cancer treatment in Texas.
Story continues below

"I was stunned because we weren't there very long and he starts talking
[political] issues," said Dorsey. "I'm not sure how we got on to that
topic. God knows I didn't bring it up. My mind was on, 'I've got
cancer.' That's what I was there for."

Dorsey, a 68-year-old retiree who lives near Houston, kept his mouth
shut as his doctor rattled on: "'If you were in Sweden today they'd say
you're too old. They'd tell you to go home and die.' I didn't say
anything because they wouldn't have treated me."

Teresa Burlew, a 51-year-old in Woodbridge, N.J., said that during a
physical two weeks ago, her physician recommended that she get as many
tests done as possible before health care reform passes. "'You better
get this test, you better get that test, because you don't know what's
gonna happen,'" Burlew recalls being told. "She said, 'Oh, I really feel
sorry for my Medicare patients because they're going to lose their
Medicare.'"

Burlew said she told her doctor she didn't think things would turn out
that way, but kept her disagreement mild. She was about to get a TB
shot. "I couldn't get testy because she had a needle in her hand and she
was gonna use it!"

Eric Stein went to see his doctor in Los Angeles, Calif., for a routine
ear-cleaning procedure last fall. He was alarmed to discover that his
doctor was out of town, leaving him in the hands of the doctor's
assistant, who, instead of using the usual vacuum device, was
brandishing some kind of poker with "a protruding piece of metal like a
wire" on one end.

"She had the instrument in my ear and she couldn't do it correctly. She
was really scraping," said Stein, 34, an actor and musician. Stein said
he was nervous, so he tried to calm his nerves by chitchatting. He
mentioned that he didn't have insurance, and he made a negative remark
about insurance companies.

The assistant reacted strongly. "She said, 'Oh, well, you're lucky you
don't live in Canada or Britain," and she mentioned the allegedly long
wait times for treatment in those countries. Stein was taken aback but
decided to keep his mouth shut.

"I didn't want to have an argument with that needle next to my brain,"
he said.

Jim Heltsley, a 67-year-old retiree in Florida, said his chiropractor
dumped him after he questioned an anti-reform flier in the waiting room.

"I went from being a good patient to a guy that was told to 'Go to
hell'. This all happened in 30 seconds," said Heltsley. "It was a guy I
went to for five years, sometimes up to two or three times a week."

The St. Petersburg Times first reported the breakup. Heltsley confronted
the doctor over a flier that said, among other things, that the bill
approved by various House panels would ration care.

"I just ducked into his office and I set it down on his desk. I said,
'Dr. Mike, who put this out?' And he says, 'It's all true.' I said, 'No,
those are myths, they've been debunked," said Heltsley. "The next thing
I knew he was standing up and he said, 'You can go to hell,' and on the
way down the hall he goes, 'I'm dropping you as a patient.'"

Some doctors' offices send out letters to all their patients asking them
to wade into the debate and call their representatives in Washington. In
July, the Southwest Internal Medicine Specialists in Orlando, Fla. sent
a letter that said some of the proposed reforms "will harm American
taxpayers and directly interfere with your healthcare."

The letter hits the usual points: government bureaucrats will interfere
with your health care, people in countries with socialized medicine have
to wait forever to see specialists, screening procedures will be denied.
It then invites patients to become members of the American Medical
Association's Patients' Action Network and do some lobbying.

A patient who forwarded the letter to The Huffington Post didn't think
too highly of it: "I find this kind of behavior unconscionable,
especially in a practice which serves a high proportion of elderly
patients," the patient said.

M. J. Galceran, one of the three M.D.s in the practice who signed the
letter, told the Huffington Post that the response to the 6,000-person
mailing was overwhelmingly positive.

"We've had really maybe half a dozen people say they're disappointed in
our stance, [but] I've had a couple dozen thank me for writing the
letter," said Galceran. He added that he and his colleagues never
initiate a political discussion in the exam room. "I think it's just
courtesy. I don't think it's appropriate. But if the patient wants to
talk about it, it's a different story."

Galceran said they wrote their letter before the AMA came out in support
of reform that's taken shape in the House of Representatives, and that
his practice subsequently dropped out of the organization.

Some doctors make no apology for bringing up politics in the exam room.
Dr. Ari Silver-Isenstadt, a pediatrician in Baltimore, Md. and an active
member of the pro-reform National Physicians Alliance, told the
Huffington Post that he's hung fact sheets in his exam room and waiting
room that say "Dr. Ari Supports Health Insurance Reform." He often talks
with parents about it.

"I think it's relevant to my patients' health care, to their
well-being," he said. "People carrying around misinformation about
health care reform is the same as carrying around misinformation about
their health care."

Bill Dougherty of Wilmington, Del. noticed a political sign in his
physician's exam room. He snapped a picture with his phone while he
waited for the doctor:

PICTURE

Another sign in the waiting room asked how the U.S. can spend billions a
day on foreign wars but can't afford to provide its citizens with health
care.

"It makes sense, obviously doctors have more of an opinion about this
than anyone, but it kinda throws you to see it, because it's not kind of
a place for politics," said Dougherty in an interview with the
Huffington Post. "I was happy to see it because I agree with the
sentiment, but I can imagine someone with the opposing viewpoint being
thrown by it."

--
Civis Romanus Sum

Gee, the self proclaimed liberal reported this abomination to the
Huffington Post....I believe every word of it....lmmfao
.

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