since the fight over Medicare in the sixties.

From the linked page:

...Physicians already are stressed with battles against so-called insurance companies that dictate how health care dollars are spent. Mr. Goodman's [John Goodman, who recently proposed that the Census Bureau should cease classifying people as "uninsured"] free-market philosophy drives our health care costs to almost double that of the other industrialized nations that provide universal care for all their citizens.

William J. Walton, president,

Dallas County Medical Society, Dallas

Policy not party!

and there are lots of them in my family, so don't take that as a swipe at the whole field.

but for years, they refused to listen to 'radicals' like us, on the issue of why insurance companies would destroy the profession. the AMA and AOA have been led by conservatives and political whores for decades, and too many doctors don't want anything to do with "liberal" politics, happy on the greens at 3pm every other day as many of them are. some of the most disgustingly conservative people i've ever met have been at physician's conventions; people who take pleasure in lording over other people because "i'm a doctor, therefore i know everything about everything." ack, i'm thinking of one conference i went to in AZ one year...oh my gawd was that painful to endure.

anyway, doctors like my uncles and mom excluded, doctors for the most part have no one to blame but themselves, as insurance companies reduce them (as they already have nurses and 'basic' care providers) to little more than wage slaves with no professional autonomy. seriously, in health care, doctors are at the end of that famous line, "first they came for the atheists (or radicals, or jews, etc) , but i was not an atheist so i said nothing..."

there was a time when doctors had great political influence, and i'm crying the world's smallest tears to see that now that it's gone, they are writing tepidly bitch LTE like the rest of us, impotent and forgotten by the powers. welcome to the club, bitches. so sorry you were too arrogant to do something about it when you could've made a difference...

/sorry for the rant, don't mean to offend the "good" physicians out there, who are many/

I have a doctor in my family, and then there our beloved French Doc, but Doctors as a group have put their wallet ahead of their patients, and only now that the system has turned on them are they waking up.