I wrote and called the President yesterday. Why? Because a bunch of white-coated doctors were paraded out in front of the White House to give some much needed “street’ cred while the President addressed the progress on health care reform.

Obama: “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”

They were all wearing their shiny, white coats looking every bit the part of the practing doctors smitten with the plans for reform proposed by the President and wending their way thru Congress. My first thought was who are these doctors? Do they belong to a group or are they just hand selected, respected doctors in the East Coast medical community. But I have to say, my Spidey Sense was up. Something smelled rotten in Denmark.

Typical of what I have come to expect of this administration, my Spidey Sense was correct. The familiar strategy of this administration of taking fringe, and yes the AMA is becoming a fringe organization(see below), medical organizations(or any organization) and use them as lackeys for veracity has become a common parlor trick. As outlined in detail in this article and here in the New York Times, these “doctors” are actually members of a political movement that essentially is linked to President Obama and his party in both efforts, affiliations and monies.

From the New York Times:

As noted below, the group that supplied many of the doctors for the Rose Garden event, Doctors for America, is a nonprofit organization that grew out of Doctors for Obama, which worked to help elect the president. But it also appears to be working closely with Organizing for America, Mr. Obama’s political organization.

I am fine with these doctors having their own views on health care reform. But the President using them as an image representative of medicine as a whole is his typical disingenuous approach to this abomination he likes to call health care reform and is just wrong. What would have real credibility and taken the guts this administration and this President lacks is to have doctors who don’t agree with him over to the White House for a beer. No such thing will ever happen in this highly choreographed Presidency. Helen Thomas is correct, these guys are worse than the Nixon White House.

Helen Thomas:

They have been handed a most remarkable historical moment—in which they get to remake the media in their own image. They have the power and they are the subject. These people in this White House are in greater control of the media than any administration before them.

All these doctors belong to an organization called Doctors for America, a spin off of Doctors for Obama-an arm of Obama’s campaign juggernaut, Organizing for America. While these doctors and their intentions are important, a name you should all walk away and read more about is Jacob Hacker. He folks is the architect of many of the Congressional plans about to be voted on. He was a professor at Yale now he is at Berkley. He designed John Edward’s health plan in his 2007 run for the Presidency. He is a behind the scenes adviser for Obama and the Democrats. His claim to fame is being the designer of the public option as a tool to remove private insurance and convert to a government run single payer system. In his own words:

“It’s not like a decal on a car,” Jacob Hacker, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the intellectual architect of the idea, said at the March 2008 conference of the Campaign for America’s Future. “It’s the engine of the car.”

Doctors for America has Dr. Hacker as their adviser. Its pretty hard to have this guy as your adviser and not have a political leaning as they ridiculously claim. That’s like saying Glenn Beck is our adviser but we are liberals-not possible.

My anger wasn’t that these doctors support a certain plan over another, it was the use of these doctors to imply all doctors are supportive of the President’s efforts when the reality is that is probably not true(except at Harvard). The AMA played the same roll a few months back with their endorsement of HR 3200 and the President’ plans for health care reform. The reality: The AMA is a bit player with only 17% of the nations doctors as members and many of them medical students(who are automatically enrolled) and retired emeritus professors. They are starting to fall to the likes of organizations such as Sermo which offer a real voice for practicing physicians. By allowing themselves to be used for political purposes, these Rose Garden physicians and the likes of the AMA undermine the serious concerns many other medical societies have about the effects all of these plans will have on the health care industry but especially the quality of care they can deliver to their patients.

It is sad to see doctors like these lead with ideology and philosophy instead of reality. There are many aspects of these plans that will impede access to quality care, stifle innovation and alter the doctor-patient relationship for the worse. Its too bad most of the doctors at the Rose Garden were busier taking pictures of their moment in the sun with the President instead of being concerned about how the President’s and the Democrat’s vision for health care might adversely affect the patients they will be taking care of tomorrow.