Memo to My Fellow Physicians: We Have Reached the Moment of Truth

Daniel Johnson / July 27, 2009

Daniel “Stormy” Johnson, Jr., MD, FACR is a Visiting Fellow in Health Policy at The Heritage Foundation and is a former President of the American Medical Association.

The recent hard to understand actions of the American Medical Association notwithstanding, physicians in the United States need to understand that we have arrived at the moment of truth.

When I graduated from medical school in the summer of 1963, the political class was already locked in a struggle over whether to have the federal government control all health care financing and delivery in the United States. That struggle had been going on at least since the tenure of Franklin Roosevelt.

When neither Roosevelt nor President Harry Truman was able to accomplish a takeover of the health care system, the advocates of central control of our health system switched to a strategy of incrementalism. The game plan was to pick off one group at a time. The first group was the elderly. (more…)