The Tea Party's Favorite Doctors
They’re not just against health care reform. They think Obama may have hypnotized voters and that climate legislation threatens your health.
Wed Nov. 18, 2009 3:00 AM PST
Most tea party protests against health care reform feature a standard cast of characters. Revolution-era patriots in greatcoats and tricorne hats; LaRouchies handing out pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache; the people with the giant fetus signs; and some guy dressed as an actual tea bag. Then, there are the doctors. Real doctors. They wear white coats and they look respectable. And many of them come from a group with a respectable-sounding name—the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
As tea partiers have become the leading opposition to health care reform, AAPS has lent credibility to their criticism of the emerging health care legislation. Before the big 9/12 rally in Washington, AAPS cosponsored a protest on Capitol Hill with the Tea Party Patriots that AAPS says attracted 1,000 physicians. The organization's president, Mark Kellen, appeared with Georgia representatives Tom Price and Phil Gingrey—GOP members of the congressional doctors' caucus—to slam the bill.
AAPS docs hopped Tea Party Express buses to protest the American Medical Association's annual meeting in Houston (the AMA endorsed the House bill), and staged a live reading of the legislation to highlight objectionable passages. When Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann called for tea partiers to come to the Capitol on November 5 to "kill the bill," AAPS doctors organized a national "tele-town hall" to prep attendees. On Fox News and talk radio, AAPS docs often appear to offer an expert medical opinion against reform.
Yet despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is "evil" and "immoral" for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of "data control" like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to "neurolinguistic programming"—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.
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For decades the AAPS has opposed any attempt—real or imagined—to expand the government's role in health care. Its last big moment in the spotlight came in 1993, when it sued Hillary Clinton to stop "socialized medicine," prompting a trial court to order the then first lady to disclose the participants of her health care task force. The organization requires members to sign a "declaration of independence" agreeing to stop participating with any third-party payers—meaning not only government programs like Medicare, but private insurers, too. Basically AAPS doctors believe that medicine should be a cash-and-carry business.
This free-market fundamentalism has made the AAPS a natural ally for big corporations. Documents released as a result of the tobacco litigation the 1990s and early 2000s show that Philip Morris officials worked with AAPS executive director Jane Orient to help the company's "junk science" campaign that attacked indoor smoking bans. The tobacco company also relied on AAPS to generate "third party press releases" in support of its agenda, according to documents in the tobacco archives. In this fall's edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, an economist who has previously received funding from Philip Morris wrote an article arguing that a tobacco tax "leads to deterioration in public health"—because it leads people to switch to cigarettes with more nicotine so they can smoke fewer of them.
For the AAPS journal, however, this is tame stuff. The publication's archives present a kind of alternate-universe scientific world, in which abortion causes breast cancer and vaccines cause autism, but HIV does not cause AIDS. Cutting carbon emissions represents a grave threat to global health (because environmental regulation would make people poorer and, consequently, sicker). In 2005, the journal erroneously claimed that illegal immigration had caused a leprosy epidemic in the US, a claim that was reported as fact in more mainstream outlets such as Lou Dobbs' show.
Much like its friends in the tea-party movement, AAPS sees threats to liberty lurking everywhere. The organization opposes some of the most accepted practices in health care, including mandatory vaccine regulations. Peer review, a long-standing hospital practice that helps doctors learn from and prevent errors, is viewed as the source of great injustice by AAPS, which fights attempts to micromanage doctors with such bureaucratic nuisances as medical evidence about what works and what doesn't. Computers, too, are an ominous threat. The organization has resisted the use of electronic medical records—which, naturally, represents an attempt by the government to acquire masses of private information about American citizens. (AAPS' executive director claims to keep all her patient notes in longhand.)
Once in a while, an AAPS member has let slip that their opposition to health care reform doesn't stem purely from medical concerns. In July, Florida neurosurgeon and AAPS member David McKalip circulated on a tea-party listserv a photo of Obama dressed in Papua New Guinean tribal garb with a bone through his nose, captioned "Obamacare: Coming soon to a clinic near you." News of the photo, first reported by Talking Points Memo, forced McKalip to apologize publicly and step down as president-elect of the Pinellas County Medical Association. He claimed afterward that he would stay out of politics for a while, but a few weeks later, he spoke at a tea party in south Florida and, on October 16, appeared on the Glenn Beck show with another AAPS member for a special on health care reform.
The tea-party movement has given AAPS—a fringe operation for most of its recent history—a much needed shot in the arm. News reports put the group's membership at about 4,000 members and it had annual revenue of barely $760,000 in 2008, according to its tax filings. By comparison, the AMA has 236,000 members and revenue of $290 million. AAPS's California chapter was apparently all but dormant until it was revived in time to kick off the Tea Party Express tour in San Diego last month.
AAPS has assumed such a prominent role in the health care debate because virtually all the other major players—like the insurance industry or the drug companies—have gotten on board with the legislation. As the battle in Washington comes down to the wire, AAPS's doctors are the last guys standing. And as the saying goes, if this is the opposition, perhaps there really is a chance that health care reform will pass this time.
Comments
Nice post as usual . Thanks
Submitted by Neil kevin on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 3:16 AM PST.
Nice post as usual . Thanks for this. I believe that despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society.
Stephanie, this was an
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 11:15 AM PST.
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The solution of course is simple, which is to allow your logged in readers to spam-rate posts.
I agree that there needs to
Submitted by NancyP on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:36 AM PST.
I agree that there needs to be something about the spam and I understand that unemployed Americans are now doing this to earn some money but it is nonetheless annoying for all that.
AAPS's growing membership
Submitted by mary k (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 11:20 AM PST.
AAPS's growing membership stems from the illegitimacy of the AMA which clearly does NOT represent most doctors. The AMA has lost credibility so much so that most doctors refuse membership. The AMA's greatest numbers come from residents and those who are still in school, i.e., those who do not yet have to work for a living. Doctors who are self-employed almost universally scoff at the AMA for its head-in-the-clouds approach to medicine. Those employed by academic institutions or who are in salaried positions at hospitals or big clinics tend to be less bothered by the AMA's nonsensical approach to healthcare because they are insulated from the effects. After all, you and I pay their salaries through insurance and taxes--they don't have to earn clients! The AAPS appeals to doctors who understand that they are are practitioners offering a service to clients. They understand that controlling health-care costs will happen exactly when you and I can shop for doctors, when we can compare costs, and when we control our own dollars. If we put limits on malpractice and move to Health Savings Accounts which return insurance to its original function (catastrophic coverage); and if we fund accounts for low income people through tax dollars, we will immediately solve the whole health-care dilemma. The AAPS promotes clarifying the practice of medicine on every level so that we all choose what we want. What is so dang hard to understand?? Innovation cannot happen within a socialized system. Lowered costs cannot occur without innovation. Have you searched the AAPS membership for its smartest, best members? Report on what they have to say. You will be surprised how logical and simple and informative they are. Real change will occur when we look around for good NEW ideas. Otherwise the choices are to remain still or move backward which is where the current health-care proposals take us.
She linked to the articles
Submitted by ericf on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 3:18 PM PST.
Mary, there are links to their own articles. If they look loony in their own publications, you can't reasonably claim their own points of view were left out. The sad fact is even doctors can put belief over science.
http://www.ravensblog.net
The AAPS are a group of
Submitted by Vic (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 3:47 PM PST.
The AAPS are a group of quacks and shills.
[citation needed]
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 4:32 PM PST.
[citation needed]
Sorry but even the current
Submitted by NancyP on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:41 AM PST.
Sorry but even the current system leaves us behind a lot of the industrialized world. Health care can't be a capitalist only venture where only those that can afford health care get it - largely what we have now actually and too many people fall through the cracks. Innovation is stifled now in a lot of areas and businesses can't afford to continue to pick up the tab for premium health insurance. Its one of the things that has caused jobs to go overseas.
Did they let you add "dang",
Submitted by Cletis (not verified) on Tue Dec. 1, 2009 2:45 PM PST.
Did they let you add "dang", you know, for that personal touch? Shill. You and your astroturf overlords loved the AMA until it came out for healthcare reform.
“You will be surprised how
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 12:15 PM PST.
“You will be surprised how logical and simple and informative they are.” -Mary K
Here are a couple of links to their logical and informative articles;
http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/lehrman.pdf
http://www.jpands.org/vol12no4/bauer.pdf
http://www.jpands.org/vol8no2/malec.pdf
Sorry if I am not going to look to them for NEW ideas, most of these look about as current and scientific as the “Old Testament”.
AAPS and AMA
Submitted by keith on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 2:05 PM PST.
C'mon mary k, give us some numbers! if it's true that the AMA does not represent most doctors and is declining, while the AAPS is growing, I'm sure the membership numbers will make that clear. And if "Doctors who are self-employed almost universally scoff at the AMA" while "The AMA's greatest numbers come from .... those who do not yet have to work for a living," then the contrast ought to be obvious, since most physicians do, in fact, work for a living.
I'll confess that I'm a bit unsure how it is that residents don't work and are immune from financial concerns, but I'm sure you can enlighten me on that score. And where do physicians who work in private practice but also work on-call at smaller hospitals -- a large group -- fit into your analysis. Are they self-employed critics of the AMA or heads-in-the-clouds elitists who are insulated from the bad effects of AMA policies?
Please fill us in!
Tea-Bagger, MD
Submitted by eh_politics on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 3:50 PM PST.
These tea-bagging doctors are a small minority (just like the rest of the members of the tea-bagging party). It is unfortunate for them that we live in a system where majority rules. The Democrats won the majority of the votes last November. Suck it up the way the rest of us sucked it for eight years of Republicans controlling the government.
Major concern with modern medicine...
Submitted by GarySeven on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 5:38 PM PST.
...it's gotten pretty political. And, pretty expensive. It's also no secret that jobs in the field of medicine are rapidly becoming some of the higher-paid jobs IN this country, meaning that you've got an institution that's cash-hungry. Lots of money in medicine, hence a lot of political influence in medicine, and, about the time you combine those two, people start gettin' pretty bossy and high-handed.
The Hippocratic oath basically states: "Above all, do no harm." Nothing in there about a yacht, 2nd summer home, high returns on investments in companies that make medical equipment, or provide insurance and are publicly traded. Or, for that matter, anything about a cost-of-living allowance.
Is medicine important? Sure. But, it's not THAT important, and about the time they start talking about making it a federal crime NOT to have health insurance, or, for that matter, to refuse treatment, well, suffice it to say that it's more or less become the medical-industrial complex.
What I'd like to know is how many times they've caught people selling dope out the back door of the pharmacy, how many $100/bag cotton balls the taxpayers are paying for, these days, and just what kind of income we're talking about, with some of these jobs, and when we can expect the lab coat crowd to generally pull their noses back OUT of politics(and the government feed trough), and go back to treating the sick and injured, because any profession that has to involve expensive malpractice insurance kind of raises the question of what kind of professional standards they're maintaining, and, furthermore, why do they always call it 'practicing medicine'? Don't you know what you're doing, after 12 years of med school? I mean, c'mon. Do they have to make med school LONGER, to compensate for bell-curve grading? Not much room for OJT in the ER, is there? Hmmm...
I don't know, I just hope that healthcare reform also means they'll be going through and canning the quacks and the crooks, for whom the only motive for studying medicine was profit.
Klaatu marachas necktie
nice work.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 7:07 PM PST.
Another fine article from Stephanie Mencimer. This and the NEJW article are one-two punch! Keep it up.
NLP is very powerful, AND....
Submitted by David B (not verified) on Wed Nov. 18, 2009 7:40 PM PST.
As a Master Practitioner of NLP and a Certified Hypnotherapist, I agree that NLP is very powerful. Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil.
That said, maybe -- just maybe -- Obama won because he had the best ideas, had the best and most cohesive campaign, stayed true to his mission, refused to hire backbiting finger-pointers, ran the best campaign, ran against tired ideas, and showed leadership through the economic meltdown weeks before the election? Could that possibly have had anything to do with it?
The so-called "tea-party"
Submitted by curlyfester (not verified) on Thu Nov. 19, 2009 4:12 AM PST.
The so-called "tea-party" movement, or the TEAliban, is so transparent as to be laughable. It is not a patriotic tea-party at all. Rather, it is a Sour Grape Party that can't stand the fact that their admittedly uber-hot-yet-intellectually-bankrupt pageant queen VP candidate got spanked by a black guy.
Let me take a moment and ponder that visual, just for my own perverted amusement...
The TEAliban has really degenerated into conspiracy obsessed madness - and is using symbolism that makes no logical sense. Obama with a Hitler mustache? Obama as "The Joker"? Obama is a typically wimpy Democrat... with little or no cojones to push through his own agenda, even with the super majority he holds in the House and Senate. Both the Hitler and The Joker would be ashamed of his lack of totalitarian ambition!
Isn't it obvious? Those images are actually less of a comment on Obama and more of a projection of the TEAliban's own political aspirations.
Presuppositions
Submitted by David B (not verified) on Thu Nov. 19, 2009 6:30 AM PST.
The presupposition, of course, is that NLP is "evil" because Obama is using it, or visa versa.
If the article was about Reagan's masterful communication, and it turned out that Reagan used NLP, how much would you bet that the article would talk about how great Reagan was for using these tools?
If Obama could really hypnotize people like that, why did he not win unanimously? Why are there still Tea Baggers out there? Are they immune from his evil spell? ;-)
It's funny how an otherwise
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Nov. 20, 2009 9:19 AM PST.
It's funny how an otherwise impassioned and cogent comment like Mary's above can be undone by a real howler. Residents don't work for a living? Really? Residents work shifts and schedules that firefighters would rebel against, for lousy pay.
I agree. Residents worked
Submitted by NancyP on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:45 AM PST.
I agree. Residents worked the OB clinic where I had my sons and they worked long shifts with high risk pregnant women and achieved great results.
Really??
Submitted by mary b (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 4:48 AM PST.
"..........Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is "evil" and "immoral" for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid......."
What ever happened to the Hippocratic oath? To heal the sick and infirm....
Or is it now the hypocritical oath? These so-called Doctors obviously went to Medical School to make the big bucks, probably nearly flunking out.
If they are so against helping the sick people who cannot or don't have insurance why then don't they just specialize in elective plastic surgery? That way, they can charge as much as they want to, leaving the sick to have real Doctors.
This country is really getting bad. People are so freakin selfish. They call themselves Christians and do the exact opposite of everything that Jesus stood for. After all, Jesus went about a healed the sick. And he didn't charge a fee for it, either.
I don't understand people, who if they were smart enough to go to Medical School and graduate, aren't smart enough to realize that the Public Option is a choice. They can still rake it in through the Insurance Companies. Because we all know that the Public Option will NOT put them out of business. I only wish. The Insurance Companies will continue to thrive, albeit a little less in their bonuses. Not enough to make them regular people. They will still be part of the top 1% class.
Can we find a roster of AAPS
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 8:12 AM PST.
Can we find a roster of AAPS members? I'd like to know which doctors not to visit next time I am ill.
Nothing New
Submitted by avannavon on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 12:08 PM PST.
The Dems are paying off their enemies. So what else is new? This article seems a convenient---trying a little inept damage control after the Hadley CRU expose and a well-deserved debunking of your favorite cause---global warming? What you have to understand mes dears is that despite whatever goes on between your ears, there is an objective reality. In that objective reality, the earth is cooling and nobody pays over a million dollars to Perkins-Cole to keep their birth certificate "a private matter". Looks like the skeptics and the birthers are closing in. Better paddle (or should I say, pedal, as in pedaling snakeoil?) a little harder, boys.
Kudos to Stephanie Mencimer
Submitted by DoctorB (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 12:40 PM PST.
Kudos to Stephanie Mencimer for her efforts to expose the the political extremists at AAPS. When a physician's behavior causes concern for that person's mental state, I am often the one who is asked to evaluate the "impaired physician" in question. While the demands of medical school & residency are sufficient to weed out many people who are too ill to practice, regrettably some slip through. Where can those be found? In the AAPS, of course.
Our highest priority as physicians must be the health & well-being of our patients. People whose top priority is to make a lot of money should pursue some other career. The values expressed by AAPS members are abhorrent; they are antithetical to both our mission (helping people without regard for the size of their bank accounts) & our identity as compassionate caregivers. I have known thousands of physicians during my 3 decades plus in medicine. None have ever regarded the AAPS as anything more than a lunatic fringe group. The AAPS members are the whores of the profession.
The ridioculous post by mary k (Nov. 18, 11:20) is obviously the handiwork of another one of those stupid GOP trolls whose drivel pollute blogs like this one.
Mary- you don't know what the hell you're talking about! Your statement that residents don't have to work for a living is very interesting. The residents I supervise thought that your comment must be made by someone who is psychotic. Residents work longer & harder than anyone in the world, for salaries so low that on a per hour basis it's practically slavery. Many have to moonlight just to make ends meet. They certainly know about financial hardship, not to mention a one-dimensional lifestyle & chronic sleep deprivation.
The AMA does not speak for the entire medical profession. But, believe me, the AAPS is not where we physicians look for advocacy. Indeed, the problem with the AMA is much more that they are too conservative & traditional, not that they're a bunch of wild-eyed socialists. The group which supplants the AMA as the association of choice for doctors will outflank the AMA from the left, not from the right.
If a doctor feels that politics is more important than their moral obligation to care for any & every patient who needs them, let them be honest enough to foresake their medical practice to go to work in politics. I have absolutely no respect for the right-wing extremists of the AAPS. They are traitors to a noble profession. Every physician who I teach & supervise must do a lot better than those greedy assholes.
Whose "Extremism"?
Submitted by avannavon on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 3:38 PM PST.
Should I work for free or, better still, have to subsidize the cost of caring for my own patients? Is this what twelve years of Medical School and internships, years of "on call" and over a million dollars of personal debt leads to?
If so, count medical care in America as DOA.
Many of us have continued to accept Medicare patients even though the paperwork is such a nightmare we lose money on them. We do it out of pity for the people---not pity for the endlessly inept federal government. The rest of America needs to listen up and take the message of AAPS on health care reform to heart.
There are a lot of things we can do to improve the situation, but an even bigger and more corrupt version of Medicare isn't one of them.
aaps cowards
Submitted by Doc John (not verified) on Thu Nov. 26, 2009 11:20 AM PST.
AAPS doesn't list or link to it's membership. That would be too transparent, too honest. They prefer to remain secret and anonymous.
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