Former Bush And McCain Mouthpiece Nicolle Wallace Claims To Speak For All Doctors
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 17th, 2009 4:33 am by HL
Former Bush And McCain Mouthpiece Nicolle Wallace Claims To Speak For All Doctors
Appearing on CNN yesterday afternoon, Nicolle Wallace, former spokeswoman to the presidential campaigns of George Bush and John McCain, claimed all doctors oppose the creation of a public plan, an integral component of reform. Indeed, the AMA, where President Obama spoke yesterday, has indicated that it will lobby against an effective public plan. But even […]
Appearing on CNN yesterday afternoon, Nicolle Wallace, former spokeswoman to the presidential campaigns of George Bush and John McCain, claimed all doctors oppose the creation of a public plan, an integral component of reform. Indeed, the AMA, where President Obama spoke yesterday, has indicated that it will lobby against an effective public plan. But even though the AMA represents only 29% of American doctors (or much less than that, depending on if you subtract the dues payers who don’t currently practice), Wallace incredulously cited the AMA’s position as she boldly claimed to speak on behalf of the “docs”:
WALLACE: I think the biggest problem that Obama faces is not Republicans, it’s the doctors. […] I think that most normal people look to their doctors for advice and for their reaction to the big health care debates that take place in Washington. And doctors are opposed, very strongly opposed to one of the central tenets of Obama’s plan.
BLITZER: Which tenet is that?
WALLACE: It is the public option. […]
WALLACE: But there’s plenty of competition. The docs argue that you would crowd out private insurers.
Watch it:
As Paul Begala noted, the AMA doesn’t bother to even survey its members. So not only is Wallace wrong to try to speak for all American doctors when she attacks the public option, she doesn’t even necessarily speak for AMA doctors.
It is difficult to take the AMA as an honest player in the health reform debate. The AMA secures over 20% of its revenue from selling doctor information to the pharmaceutical lobby in a complex scheme to help the drug lobby market its products. This arrangement certainly clouds the AMA’s policy voice.
Unlike the AMA, Doctors for America, an actual member-driven group, conducted a poll of physicians over the weekend asking if they support the public option. Within 48 hours, over 1,500 responded from 48 states with an overwhelming 97% of respondents voting “Yes.” One of the respondents to the DFA survey, Dr. Andrew Janssen, noted:
As a rural family physician, I see people daily who cannot afford or who have been denied private insurance. Without a public insurance option meaningful health care reform is impossible.
Even with the AMA leadership opposing meaningful reform, physician members of the AMA should support a public insurance option. A robust public plan would not only eliminate unnecessary paperwork gimmicks used by private insurers today, but would also give providers timely payments that would allow doctors to focus on delivering the best quality care to their patients.
CIA told Zubaydah they mistook him for a high-level al Qaeda operative.
According to new transcripts from of a 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay, detainee Abu Zubaydah said that his CIA captors told him after he was subjected to torture that “they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden.” “They […]
According to new transcripts from of a 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay, detainee Abu Zubaydah said that his CIA captors told him after he was subjected to torture that “they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden.” “They told me, ‘Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,’” Zubaydah said. Zubaydah, who was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in one month, also said that he nearly died in prison:
Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that “doctors told me that I nearly died four times” and that he endured “months of suffering and torture” on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.
Despite President Bush’s rhetoric, Zubaydah’s torture “foiled no plots,” a point that one of his interrogators confirmed during a congressional hearing last May. The portion of the 2007 Combatant Review Status hearing transcript in which Majid Khan — an alleged associate of Khalid Sheik Mohammad — discussed his treatment at CIA black sites was “blacked out for eight consecutive pages.”
