This deserves its own post.

For those of you who missed it, Sunday's Wall Street Journal featured an article co-written by three past Presidents of the American Medical Association outlining more or less exactly what we've been saying for the past 3 months.

Allow health care portability (competition), reform medical malpractice tort law (cost) and incentivize individual health care saving and policy purchase by simplifying the tax code and providing credits or deductions for individuals and families who do so (liberty, cost). These three simple, straightforward solutions would do more for reversing the rising costs of health care quicker and more efficiently than any government proposed plan. This is simple economics with a healthy dose of Constitutionality thrown in for good measure.

It's unfortunate only supporters of the president's plans will be there. Mr. Obama has missed an opportunity to learn more about the real issues facing patients and doctors and to formulate a plan that truly puts patients in control with doctors as trusted advisers.

It is unfortunate. But Drs. Palmisano, Plested and Johnson simply haven't learned the most crucial lesson from this summer's health care "debate": It is not now, nor has it ever been, about health care.

Do not let this lesson slip by in any of your conversations on the subject. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, proposed by the House, Senate or the White House regarding Health Care has even the potential to lower cost and/or improve quality. This is common sense and it's part of the reason Obama has to rely on images like the 150 doctors in the rose garden to visually sell his plan. 

He can't win on the facts because he doesn't have any. Don't forget that.

Russ