Pro-Life Doctors Upset by Harry Reid Pro-Abortion Health Care Quid Pro Quo
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 21, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life doctors who are leaders of the Christian Medical Association are upset by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s reported offer to get physicians to drop their opposition to the pro-abortion health care bills in Congress in exchange for more money.
Reid has reportedly promised national medical groups that the Senate would take up legislation to halt scheduled Medicare cuts in doctor payments over the next 10 years in return for physicians’ support for health care "reform" bills that include abortion funding.
Dr. David Stevens, the head of the Christian Medical Association, tells LifeNews.com that the report "shows how morally bankrupt this politicization of medicine is becoming."
"If professional medical organizations were to play along with Reid’s scheme of halting Medicare cuts in exchange for physicians’ support of his healthcare bill, they would be selling their birthright," he said.
"Such a sellout would be the watershed event that historians would point to as marking the de-professionalization of medicine, when physicians traded convictions for cash,’ Stevens continued. "If physicians abandon their professed commitment to the patient’s welfare in order to solely pursue financial reward, patients will pay the price–some with their lives."
Stevens says the Reid deal shows how desperate abortion advocates are to get the health care bills approved and how little support they have from the general public.
"The fact that Reid would stoop to backroom bargaining tactics is an indication of desperation, an acknowledgement that physicians are roundly opposed to his healthcare legislation," he told LifeNews.com. "As polling has shown, an impressive 45 percent of physicians say they actually are ready to quit medicine if current healthcare legislation passes."
Stevens says a Christian Medical Association survey showed 95 percent of pro-life physicians are ready to leave medicine if a weakening of conscience protections would force them to violate their conscientiously held convictions on abortion.
"Reid and his allies may be working behind closed doors on a clever way to pass healthcare legislation, but maybe they should be working on who’s going to carry out their new scheme if over half the nation’s physicians quit medicine," he said.
"Cold cash offers are not going to sway principled physicians," Stevens said.
"The question that Mr. Reid and his colleagues should be asking is not how to buy off the ever-shrinking AMA or a small cadre of cash- conscious doctors," he concluded.
Instead, Reid should worry about "how to accommodate the concerns of the vast majority of principled physicians who value conscience rights and want to keep the government from interfering with the physician-patient relationship."
Related web sites:
Christian Medical Association – https://www.cmda.org
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