Obama is Just What the Doctor Ordered - Unless You're a Doctor

The President has done it again.

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It seems that hardly any time passes that Mr. Obama doesn't estrange himself from some important sect of American society. Just a few short weeks ago it was the police -not just in Massachusetts but around the nation. Then it was the average law-abiding citizen who had the audacity to speak up at local town hall meetings and voice his health care disdain.

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Now it is the medical profession.

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It can be expected for our President to tick off people who may have never been in his corner to begin with. He may even convince some of his naive supporters that some of the dissenting public are truly anarchists and terrorists. But to anger doctors and surgeons (who are largely in his camp) due to spouting off grossly inaccurate and obviously unstudied costs of services was not only damaging to his reputation with these folks, but damaging to their reputation among the general public.

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Obama is on film saying that that a surgeon makes $30,000 to $50,000 to amputate the foot of a diabetic, while receiving a pittance to prevent the diabetes that necessitated the procedure in the first place. Many bloggers and pundits were quick to respond by calling him "idiot-in-chief". Pretty harsh indeed. And even many of his bosom buddies in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, and the California Medical Association said that he was "wrong". "The CMA wholeheartedly agrees with the President on the importance of prevention, but the examples he used were inaccurate and offensive and could undermine the trust central to the physician-patient relationship," said the California group, which represents about one-fourth of the state's 125,000 licensed doctors.(1)

With the President's popularity dropping to its low point this week, he chose a bad time to...well...cut off his nose to spite his face.

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(1) Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, August 14, 2009