Grady doctor meets with Obama

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON — As a doctor and teacher at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Jason Schneider spends much of his time these days talking about the need for change in the health care system.

Today will be no different — except for the fact that Schneider will be talking about it to President Barack Obama.

Schneider is one of more than 50 members of a health care advocacy group called Doctors for America whom Obama has invited to the White House as part of a last-minute effort to put a friendly chorus behind his calls for changes in the system.

“We live and breathe the need for health care reform at Grady hospital every day,” said Schneider, who practices and teaches internal medicine at the Atlanta hospital and is also on the faculty of Emory University’s School of Medicine. He estimates about half the patients he sees at Grady don’t have health insurance — which he said has contributed greatly to the hospital’s recent financial woes.

Other doctors from Georgia and elsewhere, of course, have differing opinions — including some who have also come to Washington to give their views.

 Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon from Atlanta, has appeared at several Washington events sponsored by opponents to a government-sponsored public insurance option, the most controversial element in the debate over health care.

“Reform is important,” Barbour said at a major protest organized by conservative groups last month in Washington, “but government is not the answer.”

Obama’s meeting with doctors Monday comes as Congress begins what could be the final weeks of debate over health care proposals. A Senate committee is expected to resume debate on the latest version of Obama’s health care plans beginning later this week; the full Senate is expected to take up the bill within weeks.

Republicans are nearly unified in opposition to the health care reform legislation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned Friday that the latest version, completed about 2 a.m. by the Senate Finance Committee but not yet formally ratified by the panel, would have “a dampening effect on what is already clearly a very, very difficult economic situation.” McConnell argued that the bill would cut benefits for seniors and raise taxes on individuals and businesses.

Democrats are hardly united in support of the plan either, with deep divisions over whether to allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private industry. There also are disagreements over the broad scope and cost of the legislation.

Just as critics of the president’s plans held massive rallies in Washington and elsewhere to try to show the depth of the opposition to government involvement in changing the health care system, the White House is hoping publicity from the meeting with doctors will paint a picture for Congress and Americans nationwide of the support for the plans.

“It’s meant to be a symbolic gesture to show the solidarity in the physician community that our system is broken and that in every corner of this country there are physicians who know that,” said Dr. Mandy Krauthamer, executive director of Doctors for America, which claims more than 1,500 member-doctors nationwide.

Schneider, 35, said he wants to tell the president not to give up on the idea of a public option.

“Maintaining choice and competition in the system is critical,” he said, “but so is taking care of the uninsured, especially for health care systems like Grady.”

Schneider said he also wants to give a voice to the uninsured at Grady and elsewhere, who he said get drowned out by the cacophony of critics.

“It’s easy for people who have insurance right now through their employers to have this anxiety about change,” he said, “but the people who need it the most are the ones who are hurting the most right now.”