I went for my physical yesterday.  In between listening and checking and telling me to lose ten pounds, my doctor asked me about the health care reform bill.  I told him that I thought it would raise the cost of health care and decrease access to health care providers.  He agreed and expressed strong concerns about the direction that the legislation moved the health care system while doing nothing about malpractice reform or the current shortage of family physicians.  I coughed, agreed and coughed again. 

Then I read this editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.  Good for these doctors:

"To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a 'Dear Patient' letter in our waiting rooms.

The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:

'Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world.'"