In one of his meeting with delgates from the AMA, Zeke Emanuel related some of the Obama Administrations tactics for healthcare reform. First, he made it clear that federal tort reform was on the table, but with a price. The price was this. A high percentage of health care dollars are spent in the last months to year or life. Their goal is to decrease this. They want the AMA to play along and push physicians to encourage withdrawl of treatment and to deny treatment for advanced conditions according to a “healthcare czar’s recommendations”. Because it would appear that the government will not pay for certain treatments but private insurance would, it is essential that the AMA play along with the governments recommendations and encourage private health insurers to do the same otherwise the political fallout would be severe. He did mention that it would overall be essential that private insurance only covered what the government did. (They do not want you using your own money to contract for the care that you want in the future.
So, Obama is willing to give tort reform in exchange for the government deciding what medical treatments you can and can not have. The AMA said NO DEAL.
