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All For One
Georgia doctors meet to debate health-care reform
by Walter C. Jones, Morris News Service
October 16, 2009
When 300 of the state's physicians
spend this weekend in Savannah, their focus will be 600 miles away instead of on the picturesque
city's historic squares and moss-draped live oaks. Consideration of health reform in Congress will
dominate the annual meeting of the Medical Association of Georgia.
"There will be active debate," says incoming president Dr. Gary Richter, an Atlanta
gastroenterologist. "I'm not certain what will come out of it."
The delegates to weekend convention represent 4,000 physicians across the state, and the
majority of them insist that the association play an active role in shaping the health-reform
debate, according to the group's internal survey.
The Georgia association was one
of the first state medical societies, and one of the most ardent, in opposing the Democrats'
proposed health reform. The Peach State doctors reject the so-called public option or legal
requirements that individuals or employers buy health insurance.
Instead, the group favors tax breaks to allow people to buy their own insurance and
government vouchers so the poor can buy theirs. To slow the pace of medical inflation, the
association calls for limits on malpractice lawsuits.
"Many procedures and tests that are recommended are done so because of the broken tort
system that requires physicians to practice defensive medicine," says outgoing president Dr. Todd
Williamson, a Lawrenceville neurologist. "It affects nearly every medical decision."
Williamson kept the association active, with frequent meetings with the state's
congressional delegation, media interviews and encouraging doctors and their patients to lobby
Congress.
During the convention, several of the congressional delegation are expected to attend,
including three who are physicians, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and Tom Price, all Republicans. Sen.
Johnny Isakson, who Williamson described as supportive of the association's position, is scheduled
speak.
Isakson, who is up for re-election next year, was the target of a protest Wednesday morning
at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park sponsored by MoveOn.org, the Georgia Rural Urban Summit and
Health Care for American Now.
Says Charity Woods, state coordinator for Health Care for America Now, "We want Sen. Isakson
to explain why he is against the public option which is supported by the majority of Americans, and
we want to know if his strong ties to the insurance companies are why he is against the public
option."
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