Bob Doherty

Bob Doherty is senior vice-president, governmental affairs and public policy, American College of Physicians and blogs at the ACP Advocate Blog.

Obamacare: The anti-death panel law

Bob Doherty

Policy

December 12, 2014

One of the most pernicious lies about Obamacare is that it establishes “death panels” to ration needed care, especially care of seniors. Although thoroughly discredited by independent fact checking sites, the death panel falsehood remains a staple of attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

But it isn’t just that Obamacare doesn’t have death panels or anything remotely like them (the law actually prohibits denying benefits based on cost); we now have strong evidence that the …

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Obamacare: The anti-death panel law

After the 2014 elections: Is Obamacare safe?

Bob Doherty

Policy

November 28, 2014

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By decisively taking control of the U.S. Senate and increasing their majority in the House of Representatives, the Republicans now have a chance to force some modest changes in the Affordable Care Act, but they will not be able to repeal or reverse it. But Republican gains in state legislatures and governorships may put the brakes on Medicaid expansion, leaving millions without coverage.

First, let’s start …

The public’s lack of trust in science is alarming

Bob Doherty

Physician

November 19, 2014

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Cynicism appears to have replaced idealism as America’s defining characteristic. So many of us just don’t trust the government, scientists, the clergy, journalists, business CEOs, labor unions, lawyers, or just about anyone for that matter, to say or do the right thing.

Two years ago, the National Journal reported that as a consequence of the Great Recession, “Americans are losing faith in …

Assimilating independent physician practices: Is resistance futile?

Bob Doherty

Policy

October 24, 2014

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Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation will recall that the most disturbing aliens encountered by the Federation were the Borg, a part-cyber, part human collective race that functioned as an integrated and cyber-connected whole that existed only for the good of the collective, rather than as distinct individuals with their own thoughts and personalities — much like honey bees work together as …

There is no excuse for physicians to take advantage of vulnerable patients

Bob Doherty

Policy

October 18, 2014

Patients are being stuck with huge and unexpected medical care bills in circumstances where they have no say in selecting the physician who is billing them, and no way for them to know in advance which services the physicians would render or what it would cost them, says the New York Times.

Mr. Peter Drier received a “surprise $117,000 medical bill from …

Physicians on demand: The Uberization of medicine is underway

Bob Doherty

Tech

September 8, 2014

Even if you don’t live in a city yet that offers Uber’s rideshare app, you probably have heard about it, because the media has widely reported on job actions by taxi cab drivers — and the gridlocked traffic that resulted — that has taken place in Washington, DC and in other major cities across the world including London, Berlin, Paris and Madrid.

Uber is an “on demand” smart phone app that allows users …

Will the attacks on Obamacare lead to a single-payer system?

Bob Doherty

Policy

August 22, 2014

The unrelenting opposition by American conservatives to Obamacare may have the unintended consequence of leading the United States to a single-payer system like Canada’s.

How’s that, you say? Isn’t the whole point of conservative opposition to Obamacare to drive home the point that the government is incapable of managing people’s health care? Yes. And aren’t conservatives effective in driving home that point? Yes, polls show that confidence in government is at …

Obamacare isn’t a train wreck. Here’s why.

Bob Doherty

Policy

August 13, 2014

For years, critics of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act), have predicted that it would turn out to be a “train wreck” — or something worse. But now we know that by every objective measure, the ACA is working out pretty darn well. Let’s run through the “train wreck” predictions, and what we now know to actually be the case:

Train wreck prediction #1: “Obamacare will lead to skyrocketing health care cost increases and …

Obamacare: Not everyone thinks the same way you do

Bob Doherty

Policy

July 17, 2014

“Everyone I know agrees that President Obama’s problem is that he isn’t liberal enough. Everyone I know believes that the problem with Obamacare is that it gives insurance companies too much power, when what we really need is a single payer system where the government runs everything, like Canada. Everyone I know believes that the answer to gun violence is to ban guns, and if the Supreme Court won’t allow that, to at least license, …

4 ways to improve the Affordable Care Act

Bob Doherty

Policy

June 3, 2014

The fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be the big issue in the upcoming mid-term congressional elections, with Republicans and their allies continuing to press for repeal, believing that it is a winning issue with voters (or at least the base voters who lean Republican). Opinion polls are not as clear-cut, though. Although more Americans continue to have a less favorable than more favorable view of the law, …

Evidence-based policies to promote gun safety

Bob Doherty

Policy

May 7, 2014

During ACP’s annual meeting in Orlando recently, the American College of Physicians released a new position paper on reducing injuries and deaths from firearms — the first comprehensive update of College policy since the late 1990s. (I am a co-author of the paper.)

Published as an online-first article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the paper is the result of an extraordinarily comprehensive review of the evidence of the causes and …

Obamacare supporters shouldn’t cast a blind eye to its faults

Bob Doherty

Policy

February 19, 2014

Even the best of families have skeletons: the uncle who had some shady business dealings, the cousin in drug rehab, brother with the messy divorce and custody fight, or the adult kids who are maxed out on their credit and behind in their mortgage payments but have to “keep up appearances” with their expensive suburban lifestyle. When these things happen, there is a tendency to “keep it all in the …

Learning about Obamacare from a car accident

Bob Doherty

Policy

January 24, 2014

Just a little over a week into 2014, my new year started off with a bang — literally — as I got into an automobile accident that involved my car sideswiping another vehicle and then crashing my car into a tree at 30 MPH. The car was totaled, but fortunately, I (mostly) walked away from the accident with only a fractured sternum and bruising.

Just a little over a week from …

What can physicians expect from Obamacare in 2014?

Bob Doherty

Policy

January 7, 2014

Tthe ACA will now begin to transform how millions of Americans get health insurance coverage. Most of us will find that the plans offered by our employers are mostly unchanged because they measure up to federal standards. To the extent that some employers are imposing “negative changes, which include higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles, they’ve all been happening for more than a decade” because of employers wanting to …

10 reasons to like the bills that repeal the SGR

Bob Doherty

Policy

December 26, 2013

At a time when Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, can’t seem to agree on anything, Medicare physician payment reform is the exception to the rule. Recently, the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees reported out nearly identical bills to repeal the Medicare SGR formula and begin to move Medicare more rapidly toward paying physicians based on quality improvement activities — the closest Congress has ever gotten to …

Why the Affordable Care Act is worth fighting for

Bob Doherty

Policy

December 11, 2013

Readers of my posts know that I am a passionate advocate for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare if you prefer. It isn’t that I have a pollyannaish view of the law itself, or the tortured political process that produced it — far from it. The ACA is an imperfect law, created by imperfect people through an imperfect process, with imperfect results. After almost 34 years of experience in …

Where Obamacare is working well

Bob Doherty

Policy

December 4, 2013

Obamacare is working quite well, in some places, for quite a large number of people. But you wouldn’t know that from the constant media drumbeat about the problems with the healthcare.gov enrollment portal and the relatively small (fewer than 6%) of the population whose individual insurance policies have to be replaced because they don’t meet the law’s benefits and ratings standards.

Now, before I get a rash of comments about how I can …

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Where Obamacare is working well

Is Obamacare paternalistic?

Bob Doherty

Policy

November 18, 2013

Dr. Bob Centor, author of the always provocative and thoughtful DB’s Medical Rants, suggests that the deep divide over the Affordable Care Act is based on “a major philosophic disagreement” over the respective roles of government and of individuals in choosing what is best for them:

The administration and their supporters believe that government’s job is to protect citizens from their bad choices. They want to decide what the people need and …

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Is Obamacare paternalistic?

Analyzing the bipartisan plan to repeal the SGR

Bob Doherty

Policy

November 11, 2013

Recently, the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees released a bipartisan, bicameral plan to repeal the Medicare SGR and reform physician payments. And this time, it looks like the effort could actually succeed: never before has there been agreement between the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, on a plan to repeal the SGR, never mind on what they would replace it …

Renewing the dialogue between the medical and nursing professions

Bob Doherty

Policy

September 27, 2013

A recent post observed that the “highly charged scope-of-practice” fight between the medical and nursing professions has resulted in social media hate speech — too often, from physicians directed at other physicians. “Like bees to nectar, a post on the topic is sure to draw dozens of anonymous, hate-filled comments” write the authors. They propose the following “principles for civil discourse” which I believe should apply more broadly to all social media …

Bob Doherty

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