Focus on our seven key principles as politics heat up
October 30, 2009
I am writing this post at the Austin airport waiting for my 6 a.m. flight to Memphis. Then I will embark on a two-hour drive to Tupelo, Miss., to speak at the Mississippi Academy of Family Practice Annual session.
It will be a delight to see AMA past president and current chair of the World Medical Association Council Edward Hill, MD, in his home town. The weather calls for five to eight inches of rain when I land, so I suspect the drive will be slow.
When traveling, I try to pick a book to read on the plane. Thanks to the House of Representatives, I now have the 1,990 pages of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, to read in detail. The House also is dealing with fixing the Medicare payment formula for physicians, but in a separate bill, H.R. 3961. The Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act is a much quicker read at 13 pages. AMA advocacy staff and our Council on Legislation will also be reviewing both to see what is in the bills that meet the AMA’s seven critical elements for health care reform so that we can keep the things that are working and improve the things that won’t.
The timing of when the House of Representatives will address the bills may overlap with the AMA House of Delegates Interim Meeting in Houston Nov. 7-10, so it will require focus and flexibility in advocacy for our patients and to ensure viable physician practices for the future. I suspect the rhetoric and politics will become even more visible over the next two weeks.
Monday I will be in clinic seeing patients all day, so I will balance answering my patients’ questions about health care reform while I counsel them on staying healthy. I suspect it is a conversation that every physician in America is having with patients. Medicare patients and military families are wondering if they will still be able to access care after Jan. 1 if Congress does not act. No more band-aids for this SGR problem. Just fix it.
Until later...
