ObamaCare #9 - ObamaCare’s Biggest Opponent Is not The GOP, It Is The Medical Profession

July 26, 2009 | By: doctor horton

Filed Under: Other

Why are Speaker Pelosi and President Obama having difficulty with the health care reform bill even though the Democrats have a supermajority? It is because they are politicians and are viewed as untrustworthy my most Americans. These politicians’ biggest opponent is not the GOP, it is the medical profession. In order to gain the support of the American people they must publicly challenge the integrity of 4 of the 5 most trusted professions.

Gallop performs an Annual Honesty and Ethics poll that rates different professions. Each year there is little change. Physicians are usually in the top 3 or 4 and politicians are near the bottom. The most recent Gallop poll was conducted in 11/08 and reported results that were consistent with this claim. The question was asked: Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low, or very low?  This particular poll looked at 21 professions among them were nurses, pharmacists, teachers, medical doctors, congressmen, lobbyists, and journalists. The results were typical of years past and showed physicians were near among the most trusted and politicians were near the bottom of the list. At the very bottom were lobbyists.
Nurses were at the top with 84% of Americans giving their honesty and ethical standards as very high. 70% of Americans rated pharmacists very high and 64% rated physicians very high while only 6% rated them very low. Looking further down the list shows journalists received 25% very high and 31% very low, and only 12% of Americans rate congressmen very high while 46% rate their ethical standards and honesty very low. At the bottom of the list were lobbyists with scores of 5% very high and 64% very low.
The Gallop report broke down the results even further into three categories of professions for honesty and ethics: top-rated, neutral, and least well-rated.

Nurses have no peer in the Gallup rankings today, but they are followed by pharmacists, high-school teachers, and medical doctors, all with close to two-thirds of Americans rating them highly. Just over half of Americans consider the honesty and ethics of clergy members and the police high or very high.
While fewer than half of Americans consider funeral directors or accountants to be highly ethical, these professions are much more likely to be viewed positively than negatively.

…Indeed, several professions suffer from a heavily negative tilt in their image ratings. The worst of these are lobbyists, telemarketers, and car salesmen, all of which are considered to have low or very low honesty and ethics by a majority of Americans.
Although several other professions — congressmen, stockbrokers, advertising practitioners, business executives, lawyers, and labor union leaders — are not as negatively viewed as the bottom three, the ratings for them skew negative by more than a 2-to-1 ratio.

Politicians have attempted to make the claim that the “the doctors are behind us”  by pointing to the support of the AMA. However, they are now finding that the majority of doctors are not falling in line. Doctors aren’t against this plan for their own selfish reasons. No, we actually care for our patients and are bound to an oath. Physicians, who are trusted with their patient’s lives and families, have a special connection with the American people that President Obama covets….a trusted relationship.
I think that the next effective communicative effort to stop this destructive health care “reform” proposed by Obama must be a campaign of physicians, nurses, and pharmacists speaking the truth to the American people in the various forms of media. The president has called us out and now it is time to give an answer.
Source: Matters of Truth/Gallup