AMA president-elect tells Rotary of health care challenges, reform

News

by Max Marbut

Staff Writer

As it has for many years, the Rotary Club of Jacksonville invited leadership of the American Medical Association to attend one of its meetings to update members on the latest issues facing health care and explain how health care affects business.

On Monday, the now-annual tradition continued when Dr. Yank Coble, club member and AMA past president, introduced AMA President-elect Dr. Peter Carmel as this year’s speaker on the issues.

Carmel is a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of the New Jersey Medical School. He is a professor and chair of the school’s Neurological Surgery Department and co-medical director of the Neurological Institute of New Jersey. Carmel has served in the AMA House of Delegates for 24 years, including eight years as a trustee.

Coble said the concept behind the annual invitation was to create an opportunity to share common traditions like those of trust, hope and ethical commitment. It also strengthens the partnership between Rotary and the medical community.

“Science allows Rotary to implement programs that are effective,” said Coble.

Carmel agreed and said, “Science invented the polio vaccine,” then cited Rotary International’s dedication to the worldwide eradication of the disease and the Rotary Club of Jacksonville’s contribution of more than $100,000 toward the effort.

Carmel said America is facing a challenge in the form of health care reform. For doctors, it will mean changes in how they practice medicine. There will also be changes required of patients.

“We have to change the unhealthy lifestyle habits of tens of millions of people,” said Carmel. He cited poor eating habits, lack of exercise, smoking and drinking to excess as the major preventable contributors to driving up health care costs.

He described the AMA as being “in the eye of the storm in health care reform,” then detailed aspects of the impending government-mandated reform that AMA supports.

Carmel said the association supports extending health care benefits to an additional 32 million Americans by making health care insurance more affordable, addressing abuses in the health care industry and “eliminating billions of dollars in unnecessary costs.”

He said another aspect of health care reform the AMA supports is “hindering insurance carriers from cancelling your insurance when you need care,” as in the case of patients receiving chemotherapy whose benefits are voided in the middle of their treatment.

Carmel said the AMA also supports tort reform. Each year, he said, defensive medicine adds as much as $150 billion to the cost of health care. The current state of medical malpractice litigation goes much further than “eliminating the bad apples.” In America, 95 percent of physicians over the age of 55 have been sued at least once and 80 percent of neurosurgeons have been sued, 30 percent more than one time, he said.

Speaking of the cost of health care reform, he said it will be expensive, “but not insuring our citizens will be more expensive.” According to the AMA, Americans spend $2.5 trillion annually on health care and “if we don’t put the brakes on cost, by 2018 health care in this country will be 20 percent of the gross domestic product,” said Carmel.

“We’re paying now for care for those with no insurance. Patients are not turned away, so we all pay,” he said.

Carmel concluded by saying the AMA has a long history of “trying to work as bipartisanally as possible,” even on occasion playing the role of broker.

“The fact of the matter is health care reform is going forward,” said Carmel. “Our job is to correct those things that we can. That’s what the AMA is doing.”

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