I read an interesting article today reporting the findings from a poll that seriously contradict what the White House and the AMA have been suggesting about the way medical professionals feel about the proposed bill to overhaul the health care system. And while I can’t say I’m surprised at the overwhelming negative response to the plan – the statistics speak volumes.

An IBD/TIPP poll found the following:

– 45% of doctors polled said they would consider leaving their practice or retiring early if the proposed health care bill was to pass

– 65% or 2 out of 3 practicing physicians polled say they oppose the plan

– 72% of doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more Americans with better quality care and at a lower cost

Click here to read the full article

I think there’s some truth to this study – and here’s why…

Right now, doctors are caught between a rock and a hard place and we have very few alternatives – many doctors have already started moving to other parts of the country where there is less government regulation on how they run their practice. What we are finding – and will continue to find with this health care bill looming – is that doctors have already started dropping their private practices and taking hospital jobs. Many are changing specialties or plan on not offering certain procedures because of strict government regulation once we move toward a universalized health care system – and for those doctors to perform procedure using local hospital facilities, well, that costs money, too. We’ve been facing a primary care doctor shortage for years now, and the numbers continue to drop. All of these things have a negative impact on the quality of care patients receive.

So I want to do a little research of my own. I want to hear what YOU think – especially if you’re a doctor or in the medical field. How do you feel about the proposed bill and do you think that it will cause doctors to leave the medical field?

Make your voice heard! I’ll be reading some of your comments on FOX & Friends tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m. E.T., where we’ll be discussing this report in more depth.

Great leaders and great political movements have a lot in common with the finest therapists and best psychotherapy: 
 
1)   They are relentlessly courageous about exploring that which might otherwise remain under cover—that which might otherwise be accepted as true without real inspection and understanding. 
 
2)   They practice a kind of quiet and reflective, yet insistent and intellectually piercing non-cooperation with liars and lies.
 
3)   They are colorblind and blind to socioeconomic status.  They see people as individuals with worthy thoughts and rich life stories, regardless of whether they are black or white, penniless or affluent.
 
4)   They are non-violent, whenever any alternative exists, which it almost always does.
 
The high ground in the health care debate and the debate over whether we remain a capitalistic society or a socialistic one will be taken and held by that group that adopts these four principles. 

Presently, I believe that the opponents of massive, unexamined changes in the health care system, a reduced level of autonomy as citizens and a powerful parental role for government in private industry and private affairs occupy that ground. Oddly and surprisingly, it is this group—the vocal opposition in town halls and at tea parties, the relatively well-heeled and well-healed group that activists have labeled insensitive in the past—that is exposing the limits of the present system to remain open to every idea and give every man and woman a fair hearing (not just those who claim to be disadvantaged or disenfranchised).  It is this group that is being met with walls that urge them to just wait and see, or just shut up, or just go away. 
 
So it is time to be doubly sure that the vocal opposition remains the loyal opposition. 
 
It is time to be triply sure that the opposition remains non-violent. 
 
The right to bear arms, which will also be under assault soon enough, should be held dear and married to the greatest reticence imaginable to use them. 
 
We are all learning together that the tools of change that once opened doors to minorities and to disempowered and worthy peoples all over the world are the very same tools that can keep in place the worthy structural beams upon which our great society was built. 
 
If leaders turn out to be reluctant listeners, protesters should speak in greater numbers, in more places, with more clarity and creativity and insistence, but never with hatred and never with fists clenched or one hand on a stick.  Let the frustrated purveyors of falsehoods and enemies of freedom use those tactics.  They always fail.
 
The psycho-political lessons learned from those shut out of the system must now be adopted to save the system.
 
There’s something elegant and inevitable about that.  The truth always wins—in public policy and in therapy.

Cases of swine flu, or H1N1, are climbing and spreading to more states.  At least 141 people in the U.S. have been infected, and one Mexican boy visiting Texas has died.  Many more cases will be diagnosed—likely many thousands—before the spread of the illness ebbs.  Public health officials and journalists warn of a pandemic, an epidemic of infectious disease that sweeps across a large geographic area, such as a continent, or around the whole world.
 
The toll of this new flu may turn out to be disastrous, but there’s no current evidence that a calamity is brewing.  Thus far, every American who has contracted the illness has survived.  Even if there turns out to be 250,000 cases this year, the number will still be dwarfed by the toll of diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, depression and alcoholism on our population.
 
What the 141 cases of H1N1 flu have already proven, however, is how vulnerable we are to panic.  Americans are on edge, uncertain about the economy and uncertain about the direction our President is leading us.  Ultimately, for all but those with the steadiest of nerves and most solid sense of self, we are a nation collectively experiencing a sense of impending doom—one of the hallmarks of panic disorder.  H1N1 may or may not cause serious physical suffering for our population, but its emergence will cause serious psychological suffering for a nation already traumatized by deep doubts about whether the solutions to our collective problems reside in bailouts, embracing dictators and apologizing for our national shortcomings.
 
 Some might say that connecting our reaction to H1N1 flu to the economic crisis and cultural crisis at hand is too great a leap, that we are as steady on our feet emotionally as a population as ever.  I don’t think so.  I’ve been at my work 16 years, seeing adults and adolescents facing every imaginable twist and turn of fate.  Never before I have seen as many individuals who feel disempowered, unable to mount any resistance (words intentionally chosen) to the stressors impacting them.
 
Our psychological resistance to trauma of any kind is down right now.  That’s one reason that Air Force One flying low near Ground Zero was such a grand faux pax:  It re-traumatized thousands of people who don’t have emotional bandwidth to spare.  It’s even possible that our psychological stress could reduce our resistance to physical illnesses, including H1N1.
 
 It’s time for a real public health initiative, rolled out through private health care providers and, perhaps, community health educators, that targets two certain epidemics already sweeping the nation:  anxiety and depression.  They may not be spread by coughing and sneezing, but they have the capacity to paralyze us emotionally and cost our nation dearly.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

It seems that the medical marijuana movement is on the move!

After years of difficult encounters with state and federal legislation to get approval on a nationwide level, stories about the benefits of medical marijuana have been overwhelming the news cycles.

A recent story from Harvard declared that one of the active ingredients in marijuana cut tumor growth in common lung cancer in animals. I read another story that found marijuana use in the Seattle-area increased rates of testicular cancer. It seems science is all over the place, but many states are trying to amend their local laws in an effort to legitimize medical marijuana use among people that have medical necessity.

So I wonder how our new administration will tackle the issue. Are we going to see national guidelines for proper indication based on real science? Or are we going to end up with the same system we have today, which seems to be an unregulated service with poor checks and balances?

Certainly one thing that cannot be tolerated is for the federal government to look the other way. The medical community should have a strong voice, not only in science, but in the way the system will operate, since it is they who will most likely be responsible for any hiccups along the way.

Patients who have legitimate medical needs should also be heard so the system doesn’t become polluted with people trying to take advantage of the availability of medical marijuana.

Join the discussion on my Facebook page.

No matter who wins Tuesday, both candidates have reminded us that one of their first priorities when they take office in January will be the economy, and a close second: healthcare… No! Wait, it will be alternative energy and healthcare―or better yet, I think it was foreign policy and healthcare.

Well any way you look at it, healthcare reform is always one of the Top 5 items politicians would like to tackle after winning the election. But somehow, it always seems to end up taking a backseat to what they perceive as “more immediate” popular needs.

As a practicing physician, I always feel like a bridesmaid, but never a bride. Yet in this election, I truly feel a marriage is in my cards. Now maybe I sound like a hopeless romantic, but if you think that Wall Street has problems, our healthcare system is worse off.

Every time we mention the issues with healthcare in this country, many ill-informed individuals  immediately begin to critique our nurses, doctors and researchers, making idiotic claims that Cuba or Venezuela have it better than we do in the U.S. And trust me―I have visited many hospitals and talked to the leading physicians from all around the globe―we are still the envy of the world. 

So when healthcare is put on the political agenda, we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need our government to give us the same attention that they have been giving to the crisis on Wall Street―and understand that our future is at stake as well.

So just like our economic and political pundits hoping for their perfect gift―I too have made my list―and I hope that the politicians are not stingy, and give me the “wedding” of my dreams.
 
1. Create affordable healthcare insurance for all families with CHOICE.

2. Make hospitals and physicians accountable for quality and create incentive for success. The incentives should be fiscally responsible, yet REAL.

3. Create the “Pregnant Women’s Security Act.” We need to decrease premature labor in the U.S. and give financial protection to women with high-risk pregnancies that cannot work.
 
4. Invest in healthcare infrastructure.  We need to built more hospitals and give access to these hospitals to secure federal loans with favorable terms.

5. We need more nurses. Help nursing students get educational aid and foster the nursing science.

So all I can hope for on our “big day” is that this election brings a union between two American institutions―politics and healthcare―and a president who is really committed to the best interests of the American people.

With Hillary Clinton set to concede the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, supporters of the former First Lady have a difficult transition to make. 

Their aspirations to elect their candidate to the corner office took an increasingly divisive tone over the past weeks. Sen. Clinton unconsciously connected her rival to a presidential candidate assassinated while campaigning in the month of June (Robert Kennedy), and her campaign charged that the Obama campaign had a gun to her head to force her to quit the race.

Talk about politics as a blood sport. How does a Hillary Clinton loyalist line up behind her nemesis?

From a psychological perspective, the answer to that question is:  Not right away and not necessarily shoulder-to-shoulder.

Clinton supporters will need a little time to let the final chapters of their candidate’s campaign echo in their minds. They’ll need to grieve the loss of what looked like a sure thing and which has the language of death so closely associated with it.

They’ll need to date the political process for a little while before falling in love again — with the real potential to advance their ideas, if not their candidate.

To rush this process would be to short-circuit it. The wounds inflicted by each candidate on the other are too deep. They can’t be magically healed with a photo op or a raised hand. 

Pretending Clinton support translates in a wholesale way to Obama needlessly inserts falsehood into a movement that all of us, regardless of our politics, would have to admit is fueled by passion.

Hatred of John McCain will not immediately galvanize Democrats into a united force. McCain is, simply put, hard to hate. The most unsympathetic of biographers would not question his patriotism or bravery or character or commitment. 

Not even Obama choosing Clinton for his running mate would bridge the psychological divide here. That would create the immediate specter of a dysfunctional marriage in need of emergent counseling. It would look and feel like a shotgun wedding. And there’s that image of a gun again. Best to steer clear.

No. This will take a little time. And giving voice to that fact, actually verbalizing the idea that Clinton supporters can gravitate into Obama’s orbit, not rocket there, is the best way that Democrats can make it happen, in due time.

Dr. Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel. He is the author of Living the Truth: Transform Your Life Through the Power of Insight and Honesty. Visit his Web site at www.livingthetruth.com.