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Marchers say 'No to ObamaCare'
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Photo by Ronda Churchill.
Yelling their opposition to a health care bill before Congress, protesters rally Saturday outside Caesars Palace. About 250 showed up for the protest sponsored by the Nevada Healthcare Professionals Coalition. » Buy this photo
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 10:02 a.m.
Dr. Kevin Fradkin couldn't stop smiling as he watched health care professionals walk the Strip on Saturday carrying signs that included messages saying "Kill The Bill" and "No to ObamaCare."
It is well past time, the 36-year-old general surgeon said, that Americans realize that many doctors and nurses and others in health care oppose the health care reform bills championed by President Barack Obama and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"Just because the American Medical Association has backed these reform measures doesn't mean all doctors support them," the Las Vegas physician said as he prepared to take photographs of the protesters marching down the Strip near Flamingo Road. "People need to know that."
About 250 people showed up for the noon protest sponsored by the Nevada Healthcare Professionals Coalition, whose members often say the AMA doesn't represent the majority of physicians.
An AMA representative told the Review-Journal in August that 250,000 of the nation's 940,000 doctors are AMA members.
Dr. Joe Heck, a Republican running for the seat of U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., used the march to campaign, as did Dr. Robin Titus, a Northern Nevada Republican trying to gain her party's support for a run against Reid in November.
A few supporters of Obama and Reid's health care plan showed up, including Carolyn Essex, who described herself as a 49-year-old "stay-at-home mom" who wants the kind of "affordable health care" she says the Reid bill will deliver.
"People want reform now," she said. "We can't wait any longer."
Fradkin said the reform measures winding their way through Congress do nothing to stop much of the health care dollars going for administrative costs to insurance companies.
"There's really no reform regarding insurance companies at all," he said.
Recent studies have shown that about 13 percent of private health insurance premiums go to administrative costs that include marketing, claims processing, managing contracts with doctors and hospitals, quality assurance, regulatory compliance, information technology expenses, general overhead and profits.
Two registered nurses on hand for the demonstration, Pat Nelson, 62, and Joanne Lutman, 58, said they want the public to know what happens when government becomes more involved in health care.
"You see how they treat people over 65 when it comes to vaccinating people with the H1N1 vaccine," Nelson said. "Even though a person has the same kind of chronic health condition as someone under 65 who is able to get a shot, the government doesn't allow an older person to get it. The government is making a decision on how much a person's life is worth."
Lutman said she lived in Canada for two years and was upset that people had lengthy waits for care under that country's government-controlled system.
"They even gave counseling to people waiting for open heart surgery, helping them deal with the fact they might die waiting," Lutman said.
Las Vegas physician Richard Chudacoff, who spurred an October march on Washington by about 250 physicians from across the country, was on hand for the protest.
"More and more doctors are deciding to speak out," he said. "They should. They know the most about what's going on."
Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.
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Perhaps the 50 people protesting should go to the source, and do their walking outside the homes of some doctors who have been controlling healthcare in Nevada for several years, at the expense of outcomes and other doctors who have tried in vane to make a living without becoming their contracted employee.
"More and more doctors are deciding to speak out," he said. "They should. They know the most about what's going on."
Spare me...perhaps some doctor's know what's going on - but most are concerned about the bottom line....Do you know what the call the guy who graduated last in medical school?....doctor
Geez, some R.N.s really are dumb as evidenced by: "You see how they treat people over 65 when it comes to vaccinating people with the H1N1 vaccine," Nelson said. "Even though a person has the same kind of chronic health condition as someone under 65 who is able to get a shot, the government doesn't allow an older person to get it. The government is making a decision on how much a person's life is worth."
The same thing happens with the seasonal flu shot when there is a shortage...the old folks get it first because they are the most vulnerable. In the case of H1N1, kids are the most vulnerable and the older folks are not.
Just goes to show you that a degree doesn't necessarily mean one has any common sense or critical thinking skills.
50 protesters or 250? Medical professionals or people dressed up in white coats pretending to be? Las Vegans or merely teabaggers bussed in to make it appear Nevadans are opposed to the bill?
If a maximum of 250 people was all the opposition could get to come out on a Saturday at noon, I'd forcast that healthcare reform has an excellent chance of passing.
In general, physicians who oppose the plan are greed head specialists who fear they might have to trade their BMW 700 series for a 500 series, and move from their 5,000 sq. ft. home on the links to 3,500 if their rates are cut. Hospitalists and other primary care docs, like your primary care doc, are generally in favor of reform.
I particularly enjoyed the protests of the nurses who, with their community college certificates, believe they know something about evidence based medicine.
Evidence-based medicine is a pretty simple concept. "The basic principle of evidence based medicine is that clinical decisions that are made between doctors and patients should be driven by data," says Peter Bach, now a physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and once an adviser to the head of the Medicare system.
"What it means is the careful application of information from well-designed studies to decide what medical practices work, and how well they work," says Alan Garber, head of the Center for Health Policy at Stanford University.
Evidence-based medicine can be used to determine how often someone should be screened for cancer, and it can be used to determine what sort of treatment is best. But people don't always want to do what the data say to do.
As a family practitioner in North Carolina, Lori Heim sees that a lot. It comes up all the time with sinus infections, she says. She remembers one patient who demanded antibiotics for her viral sinusitis, even though multiple studies show that's the wrong thing to do.
"The previous doctors gave her antibiotics and she got better," Heim says. But that's probably because she would have gotten better anyway, even without the antibiotics.