Favorite Quotes
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - HL Mencken
====
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius
====
"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease" - Sir William Osler
====
" The best test of a person's character is how he or she treats those with less power." - Bob Sutton
====
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - well, I have others." - Groucho Marx
====
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
====
"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them" - Friedrich Nietzsche
====
"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple." - Charles Mingus
====
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein
====
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
====
"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around." - Talking Heads, Life During Wartime
====
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." - Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a
====
"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." - Thomas Sowell
====
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - HL Mencken
====
"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow
====
"A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not to dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves." - Herbie Hancock
====
"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche
====
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France
====
"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ====
Nov - 15
Dec - 19
Jan - 21
Feb - 8
Mar -
Thoughts on lobbying for HR 2350
21 May2009
I spent the day walking around Capital Hill, visiting 6 congressional and 2 senatorial offices. Lobbying does not come naturally to me, but I have learned that the activity has become an integral part of our democratic process.
ACP made this process painless. We had a busy day visiting all these offices, but our schedule really was optimal for success. The announcement of HR 2350 (see yesterday’s press release) really defined our lobbying. We had a compact message as HR 2350 combines several important aspects of ACP policy.
Our message:
- Payment reform for primary care
- Loan repayment and scholarship programs
- Support for the patient centered medical home
- Increased CMS funding for primary care (and general surgery) housestaff positions
We had a chance to talk with 3 congressmen. You mostly speak with staffers when you lobby, but 2 congressmen spent significant time discussing the bill.
Primary care is dying in this country, and hopes of universal coverage depend on an adequate supply of family physicians, pediatricians and internists. I blogged about the New York Times coverage of last month – Finding enough primary care.
I believe that the components of this bill are essential to health care reform. If we do not work to rescue primary care, then all other health care components will mean little.
Related posts:
- HR 2350
- Some thoughts on health care reform
- Some early inclusions in the House bill
- Are the Democrats destroying health care reform?
- A few more thoughts
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
- In: Medical Rants
1 Response to Thoughts on lobbying for HR 2350
David Block MD
May 21st, 2009 at 7:13 pm
How does this provide an incentive for primary care practice over the productive life of the practitioner? And how does this provide an incentive for the practice of quality medicine, fulfilling to physician, consumer, and all other stakeholders? Will an FP ever be able to see as many patients as a radiologist can read film?
For the last year for which I could find statistics on a quick trip through Google, about $280 billion was spent just by Medicare for Part B. Let’s not think about private insurers or Medicaid yet. There are around 500,000 practicing physicians in the United States. If we agree that every physician should make “plenty of money” (enough to be secure and, more importantly, feel secure and feel appreciated, etc.), then, again, why not just guarantee every practicing physician that one-half million dollars per year – and no more. Incentivize the practice of medicine, if you will; disincentivize the abuse of the system. It would take no more than Medicare is paying now. Have private insurers subsidize Medicare. No more Medicaid woes. No more billing debacles. Remove doctors from the “business” side of the equation. At least, ask them how they would feel about that.
Pay doctors for BEING doctors, and not for the piecemeal practice of a cottage industry as defined by social, political, and economic systems 100 years ago.
Or else, tell me what’s wrong with this proposal.