Survey Finds Doctors Will Quit if Obama Health Plan Passes

And they do NOT support the Dem plan!

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News interviewed David Axelrod, Obama's campaign strategist, recently and Axelrod claimed that doctors support Democrat's health care "reforms" (video).

Flopping Aces chief Obama apologist, Larry Weisenthal, a man spinning so fast he must dizzy all the time, echoed that same talking point a few days ago and pointed to a questionable survey where responding physicians were paid to offer their opinion as proof.

Sorry guys, but a new survey from the Investors Business Dailly Tipp poll, #1 in election predictions, has a different result:

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul
By TERRY JONES
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILYPosted 09/15/2009

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

Doctor opposition to health care overhaul proposals is broad and deep, revealing concerns not just about soaring costs, declining care, possible rationing and a lack of limits on malpractice suits, but also about government competence and motives, detailed responses to a new IBD/TIPP Poll show.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

21 Objections

In combing through the responses, we identified no fewer than 21 separate issues doctors felt either weren't addressed or weren't solved by proposed reforms. The issues are many, but boil down to three big categories: costs, controls and courts.

One complaint was common: Doctors feared any government reform would turn into a kind of "socialized" medicine. Some were quite blunt: "I oppose socialism in all its forms or incarnations ... government should be shrunk drastically, not expanded."
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This unconstitutional plan gives sovereignty over our bodies to unelected, unaccountable, ignorant bureaucrats," went one response along these lines. "Every governmental micromanagement of our lives has failed in its objective, and caused moral and economic bankruptcy."

But constitutional concerns were eclipsed by anger over the lack of tort reform — mentioned by hundreds of respondents. Physicians say they practice too much defensive medicine, which drives up costs, just to protect themselves from lawsuits.

The costs of this are enormous, though hard to precisely quantify. Estimates range from $100 billion to $200 billion in total added costs to both doctors and patients. Doctors in some specialties, such as neurology, pay as much as $250,000 a year for malpractice insurance.

Fear Of Lawyers

A number of our respondents used identical wording for why they didn't support health care reform: "No tort reform."

"The more lawsuits against doctors, the more testing is done," said one respondent, uttering a frequent complaint. "The government never interferes with lawyers — why? They are afraid, or they're all lawyers."
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Foreign Experience

Many of those who opposed the plan had a unique perspective: They had practiced or lived under national health care systems in other countries.

"I trained and worked in Canada prior to coming to the U.S.," went one typical letter. "The same arguments were used in Canada to launch 'universal health care.' It is anything but universal and free."

Others had similar complaints.

"I did two years of training in Canada — disaster. When the government needed money, it decided patients with a stroke would not get a hospital bed. I had to have interns carry hemiplegic (a condition in which half a patient's body is paralyzed) patients to their families' cars."
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"It will take away consumer choice, drive up health care costs, and drive down health care quality," said one. "It will sharply increase the demand for health care providers and sharply decrease the supply as doctors like me will retire early and students will avoid the field."

Who are you going to listen to? The majority of doctors who oppose the plan or the Democrats who have yet to show ONE government program that actually does what they promise it will at the cost they predict?