AAPS: Withdraw the healthcare reform bill

Withdraw the healthcare bill and start over.

That's the message in a letter sent today to Sen. Harry Reid from a national physician association representing doctors in all specialties.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) asked Senate Majority Harry Reid to give America a real Christmas gift: withdraw the divisive healthcare reform bill.

The majority of Americans don't want the bill--which is primarily a compulsory insurance bill - including the majority of physicians. More than 40 medical organizations are on the record against the bill, representing more than 500,000 doctors - far surpassing the AMA membership.

There's something in the 2,000 pages for everyone to hate," said Jane M. Orient, M.D., AAPS Executive Director, co-signatory of the letter. "It's bad medicine, and bad public policy."

The letter states: "The heart of this proposal is compulsory insurance: it forces Americans to buy a product they would otherwise reject, thereby subsidizing the very corporations that are being justly criticized from both the left and the right. This should be unacceptable to all, including both single-payer and free-market advocates.....

.....The current proposal is like giving a patient an injection of 2,000 ingredients--some untested either alone or in combination, some known to have serious adverse effects, and some to be concocted later by an administrative agency. It is bad medicine, and bad public policy."

Dr. Orient emphasized that the Senate is about to vote away its own authority, delegating it to politically unaccountable bureaucrats. "A vote for this could be the last meaningful vote on health policy that any senator will have the opportunity to cast," she speculated.

"The right thing to do is to start over with thoughtful, one-at-a-time, transparent proposals, with hearings and plenty of constituent input. That is the way a representative, deliberative body is supposed to work--not by backroom deals and arm-twisting to come up with a minimum number of votes," warned Dr. Orient.