American betrayal

Physicians of the Florida Medical Association recently sent a message on health care reform to America and the American Medical Association: The FMA has "no confidence" in "the ability of the AMA leadership to effectively protect the Profession of Medicine in America."

AMA leadership aided politicians with dark-of-night votes - overcoming bipartisan opposition of a bill that had been rejected by the American people. The AMA provided political cover for a government and corporate takeover of medicine that breaks the trust between patients and doctors - a betrayal of the finest medical care in the history of the world.

Americans cannot trust the AMA leadership on health care at this time.

This expansion of power over patients by bureaucrats and corporate accountants is a threat to the lives of Americans. Technocrats are creating a rationing system in America to deny care to people who need it most - and who paid for it.

The AMA endorsed a bill creating panels that are deciding that cancer drugs decreasing suffering at the end of life are "too expensive."

Committees are coercing doctors to withhold antibiotics at 24 hours after surgery despite proof that this increases infection rates. Panels force doctors to inappropriately give beta blockers to some heart attack patients, resulting in shock and accidental death. Arrogant and untouchable elitists are deciding what medical care patients receive - not patients, with doctors as their trusted advisors.

This is an example of a system that has failed throughout history. Political committees decide the cost and availability of goods and services. Price controls and rationing are imposed, leading to shortages in physicians, medicines and surgeries that have given Americans the best cancer survival, shortest waiting times and most patient satisfaction.

The AMA endorsed a plan without tort reform that allows nurses and pharmacists to practice medicine. It also adds 16 million people to a failed Medicaid system where patients must go to the emergency room for care and bankrupts our country.

A future of waiting lines, rationing, lower quality and bankruptcy is written large in its prototype: Romneycare in Massachusetts.

Like Obamacare, doctors are put on a budget and punished if they spend a penny more on their patients. Medicare and other patients who would seek to escape from this system will lose all the benefits they earned.

The original proposal at the FMA was to withdraw our delegation to the AMA - a separate organization. But one doesn't withdraw congressmen from Washington, and the FMA now seeks to have the AMA once again stand up for the medical profession as a trusted servant of the patient - not a servant of the state or insurance companies.

FMA physicians echoed the sentiment of so many Americans today: We have "no confidence" in the ability of elite politicians to preserve medical freedom for our patients.

In a column in The Tampa Tribune ("Florida's medical dustup," Sept. 1), Brian Klepper and David Kibbe attacked me and the FMA as representing the "old guard" and fighting against "progressive" change.

They hailed the ability of people like them (who don't practice medicine) to use computers to micromanage medical care and complain that doctors make money by caring for patients - even as these members work as high-priced medical industry consultants.

Kibbe and Klepper believe doctors should be denied financial incentives if they don't use computerized medical records with integrated "decision support" software that lets bureaucrats interfere with medical practices.

These computer records are more like Big Brother watching to make sure your doctor is "efficiently" saving money for state-run insurance. Big Brother medicine will actively penalize doctors if they don't ration care. No patient can trust their doctor in such a system.

I am proud to lead the way to send a clear message to AMA leadership: Start standing up for patients. Like most doctors, I see AMA leadership as betraying American medicine. I am working to repeal government-run medicine and replace it with a FMA plan that puts patients in charge, lowers costs and increases quality so the best days of medicine will be ahead of us, not behind us.