North Carolina Medical Society: Show us the money!

After NCMS CEO Bob Seligson declared the U.S. House health care bill “un-American” I was fairly certain the group would not follow the American Medical Association in endorsing the legislation. Still, I was interested to see Seligson’s objections enumerated.

While I expected the organization’s letter to North Carolina’s congressional delegation to be outrageous, it is actually entertaining. You can simmer the two page epistle down to one sentence, “It’s really too bad that there are so many uninsured people and we really like the parts of the bill that give us more money but we would like even more money.”

You would expect the NCMS would at least feign interest in the larger health care system, but no. It’s all about the dough. The funniest part is that the NCMS says that it will not support any legislation that includes the following items:

A public option program
Lack of meaningful tort reform
Lack of clear physicians-developed evidence-based guidelines
Bundling of reimbursement
Denial of care or rationing
Lack of sound financing for any program
Restrictions on physician-owned health care facilities
Replacement of MEDPAC with IMAC

Huh? The reason for reform is to stop the denial of care and rationing that is currently practiced. And it’s strange to say you oppose any “public option” when so many designs are on the table, including the Senate plan that reimburses doctors at the same rate as private insurers.

If tort reform were ever enacted I’m not sure what the NCMS would spend its time complaining about.

And nearly everyone, except the NCMS, thinks we need to move toward bundling payments, comparative effectiveness research, and establishing an independent panel to advise Medicare.

And the physician-owned health care facilities are just silly. As if the fee-for-service system were not bad enough, doctors want to own hospitals so they can make even more money without having to treat all of those uninsured patients who go to WakeMed, Duke, UNC, Pitt County Memorial Hospital, and Carolinas Medical Center.

Basically, the NCMS opposes any reform that contains the long-term costs of health care. Don’t worry about the uninsured. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t worry about efficiency or effectiveness. Just pay us. That’s a reasonable position.