President Obama addressed the AMA’s House of Delegates last week on June 15. He was the first president to do so since Ronald Reagan, twenty-six years ago, on June 23, 1983. These two speeches were surprisingly similar in their contents but also remarkably different in the messages they sent.In 1980, when Reagan assumed office there were the malaise of the Carter years and the worst recession since World War II. Trouble in the Middle East and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism were just the beginning of his problems. The economy was in near collapse. Inflation was in double digits and unemployment was high. Interest rates paralyzed credit markets; people couldn’t get affordable mortgages and the housing market was at a complete standstill. Medicare spending was through the roof and there were 31 million people who were uninsured. High medical inflation was making costs unsustainable, jeopardizing the quality of and access to health care and having profound effects on the rest of the economy. 0Reagan did not address the AMA as soon as he assumed office, but three years later. In fact, he was at odds with the AMA, and there was every expectation that he would not be well received. In his first term in office, he reformed health care and one of those reforms was an open wound for doctors. Ther
e was no fanfare or bravado over these reforms mainly because they never received much media attention when they were debated in Congress, at least not in the beginning. History essentially forgot Reagan’s contributions. In fact, President Obama totally ignored Reagan in his speech when he credited other presidents for tackling health care, even Bill Clinton, who tackled it and failed. Reagan’s speech was short, half as long as Obama’s, and accentuated with his self-effacing humor so characteristic of his style. He began, “Let me start by saying as strongly as I can, the quality of American medicine is unsurpassed…America's doctors have no peers. Your medical accomplishments are a gift to mankind that honors us all.”At first there was only polite applause, but, halfway through, he totally won them over. “Back in 1847 a group of 250 physicians convened in Philadelphia to establish this American Medical Association. Well, I'm going to tell you exactly what I told them. We have the best health care in the world, because it has remained private.” This was met with both raucous laughter and prolonged applause. Reagan then began to remind the audience about what he already accomplished and about what he hoped yet to achieve and needed their support. Among those things that he accomplished were the prospective payment system that controlled spiraling hospital costs which is still in place today, the streamlining of the FDA’s drug approval process enabling breakthrough drugs to get to those who need them more quickly and the Orphan Drug Act which encouraged the development of treatments for rare diseases that killed and crippled tens of thousands of Americans, He proposed a limit on tax deductions for high-priced health plans making most employer contributions for health benefits tax free, encouraging employers to provide affordable health benefits to employees. He also proposed and later passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act.
e was no fanfare or bravado over these reforms mainly because they never received much media attention when they were debated in Congress, at least not in the beginning. History essentially forgot Reagan’s contributions. In fact, President Obama totally ignored Reagan in his speech when he credited other presidents for tackling health care, even Bill Clinton, who tackled it and failed. Reagan’s speech was short, half as long as Obama’s, and accentuated with his self-effacing humor so characteristic of his style. He began, “Let me start by saying as strongly as I can, the quality of American medicine is unsurpassed…America's doctors have no peers. Your medical accomplishments are a gift to mankind that honors us all.”At first there was only polite applause, but, halfway through, he totally won them over. “Back in 1847 a group of 250 physicians convened in Philadelphia to establish this American Medical Association. Well, I'm going to tell you exactly what I told them. We have the best health care in the world, because it has remained private.” This was met with both raucous laughter and prolonged applause. Reagan then began to remind the audience about what he already accomplished and about what he hoped yet to achieve and needed their support. Among those things that he accomplished were the prospective payment system that controlled spiraling hospital costs which is still in place today, the streamlining of the FDA’s drug approval process enabling breakthrough drugs to get to those who need them more quickly and the Orphan Drug Act which encouraged the development of treatments for rare diseases that killed and crippled tens of thousands of Americans, He proposed a limit on tax deductions for high-priced health plans making most employer contributions for health benefits tax free, encouraging employers to provide affordable health benefits to employees. He also proposed and later passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act.For further details visit at:www.examiner.com/x-10183-DC-Health-Care-Examiner~y2009m6d24-Obamas-address-to-the-AMA-vision-of-the-future-or-a-warning-to-doctors
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