Barack Obama is attacking doctors again, this time accusing them of chopping off Diabetes patients’ limbs for profit. Here is what the President said:
“All I’m saying is let’s take the example of something like diabetes, one of—a disease that’s skyrocketing, partly because of obesity, partly because it’s not treated as effectively as it could be. Right now if we paid a family—if a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they’re taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that’s $30,000, $40,000, $50,000—immediately the surgeon is reimbursed. Well, why not make sure that we’re also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation, right? That will save us money.
The fabulous blogger at No Sheeples Here has diabetes, and is slamming President Obama for his recent use of Diabetes treatment under the current system as an example of why socialized medicine is superior.
Going back to my used car salesman analogy for a moment, Barack Obama apparently is clueless about the gargantuan efforts being made by insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield who contact the recently diagnosed and enroll them in a program called the “Healthy Endeavors Diabetes Program”. The program assigns a coach who contacts the person with diabetes and works with them to educate them about the disease, how to control their glucose levels and what they can do to reduce the risk of complications. He also conveniently omits the fact that many pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi-Aventis and Novo Nordisk have education programs of their own which they make available via grants to organizations that train and certify spokespersons that speak to groups of people with diabetes, their family and friends and other health care professionals and many physicians and hospitals have established diabetes support groups.
Obama appears to be hell-bent to sell a bill of goods to the ill-informed and intellectually lazy. For him to characterize doctors as macabre manglers who wantonly perform amputations is nothing short of reckless demagoguery and the American Medical Association has reprimanded him yet again:
I used to make artificial limbs for diabetics who had suffered an amputation, and made money off them for years. Obama is clueless on this subject. Its the last thing a surgeon wants to do, to ampuutate a limb; it’s a sign of failure on their part to save the limb. His gross mischaracterization of medical personnel as greedy is disrespectful and misleading, but probably resonates with the poor and the under-educated, his core constituency. Since when did we trust politicians, who are running popularity contests and not on leadership based on values, than doctors, whose sworn oath is to protect and preserve life?