Jewish Doctor: I choose Maimonides over Obama

NY Post via Vos Iz Neias:

I'LL STICK WITH MAIMONIDES

By MARC K SIEGEL.

Last updated: 12:22 AM August 26, 2009

DID President Obama realize just how offensive it was to pitch his health reforms as "a core ethical and moral obligation"?

I don't take guidance on how to practice medicine from presidential decree, but from the Oath of Maimonides.

The great 12th century rabbi and physician wrote, "The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of thy creatures . . . May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain."

I was trained to never give up hope in curing a patient until hope is truly lost. That's the moral imperative in my practice of medicine -- and it requires no government oversight.

I'm hardly alone among physicians in being guided by these egalitarian principles. We're taught in medical school and residency to treat all patients the same, regardless of income, VIP status, sex or skin color.

My obese patients get the same level of care as thin ones; the old, the same as the young. I distinguish only in terms of conditions or medical risks, not in terms of demographic entitlements.

My precepts run contrary to the idea of meeting with a 65-year-old to discuss specific ways I may withdraw care, as detailed in the House bill that the president has praised.

Nor do I see it as especially "moral" to push tens of millions of Americans into a new version of Medicaid or Medicare, as these "reforms" would do (some sooner, some later). I'm too familiar with how I and other doctors struggle to treat patients despite their Medicare or Medicaid coverage.

Dr. Zane Pollard, an Atlanta pediatric opthamologist who literally saves children's sight, is upset enough about physicians being wrongly attacked and overlooked that's he's been circulating a letter discussing how he often winds up delivering sight-saving ointments or surgeries for free -- because there's a delay or denial in the arcane Medicaid paperwork he must file to get paid.

"We are being lied to about the uninsured," he writes. "They are getting care. I operate on at least two illegal immigrants a month who pay me nothing, and the children's hospital at which I operate charges them nothing also . . . This [free care] is true of every community in America."

The president has accused those who disagree with him of "bearing false witness," but he should be looking in the mirror. He's accused the entire US medical profession, several times, of performing unneeded amputations in order to make a buck.

He also makes false promises. Last week, he claimed his health reforms are needed to provide care for tuberculosis patients so that they wouldn't go untreated to the playground and play next to our kids. In fact, federal and state laws already mandate such treatment -- and cover the medication for such a patient.

For all Obama's talk of providing health care for all, he and his allies in Congress are the ones who want to drastically cut payments to doctors and hospitals, the workers who actually provide the health care we all receive. Such cuts must compromise the quality of care; it's disingenuous not to say so -- and worse to accuse the critics who point that out of "spreading lies."

Marc K. Siegel is a practicing internist, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[S M Robinson]

I'm afraid too many fools believe the President will "help" them. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having any conversation about government mandated and provided healthcare.