A $245 Billion Doctor's Bill

AP, July 21, 2009: "WASHINGTON -- House Democrats want to give doctors a $245 billion sweetener that helps ensure their critical support for a health care overhaul bill. Next up: Trying to explain how they could do it without breaking President Barack Obama's promise that health legislation won't increase the federal deficit."

While there is little empirical data from which to infer a professional ideological bias on the part of physicians as a whole – or even the more distilled versions found among the AMA leadership (see, e.g. Goldman, “Factors Related to Physicians' Medical and Political Attitudes: A Documentation of Intraprofessional Variations,” Lee Goldman, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 177-187), $245 billion dollars apparently can buy (or lease) their support of one of the most ambitious and radical pieces of legislation ever to be feverishly cobbled together by a Democratic Congress, itself glued together by unequal measures of cupidity and ideology. Still, we could hope that one of the brightest and best educated segments of the population might have perused the 1,000+ pages of the metamorphosing bill in order to apprehend its draconian ramifications. Once again, money is the great equalizer.