Politics and Healthcare

I was warned to stay away from the subject of politics, so I would not offend anyone and keep them away from VideoMD. But given the election is coming closer, and the angry tone that our two parties generate in the media, it was difficult to avoid.

The main issue that I want to discuss is not who is right and who is wrong, but the divisive nature of the way the issues are presented. While we expect the politicians to play politics as usual, the trend has spread to the mainstream media, the blogoshpere, and even to the water cooler conversations in the office. If you did not see the interview with Matt Damon, the recap is that Matt was terrified at the possibility of Sarah Palin being President of the United States, because of her inexperience. Now for someone to say that they don't want to vote for a candidate because of lack of experience, sure...no problem. But to be terrified at one candidates inexperience, and to turn around and pledge your support for another candidate with marginally more experience is just plain silly. You may say that is also expected from a liberal minded movie star, who will joke about the intelligence of the American people if we don't elect his candidate. But this problem is now ubiquitous, you see it in non political newsletters, in (previously off limits) sporting events, and in the conversations around the water cooler at work. It is like people have chosen a political side, as they would a sports team, and they repeat the talking points of their chosen party.

Obviously, this type of conversation is incredibly damaging. It doesn't work in marriage, in friendship, in business, and it certainly is not working to unite our country to face the issues we need to face. Not only that, it does not reflect the truth about who the American people are. The overwhelming majority of us are not party line liberals, or conservatives. We have our own issues we care about, and some that we are passionate about. None of us really fit into what both parties like to consider their "base". Let's, once again, be strong, independent thinkers, who look at the pros and cons of each candidate, and each party on all of the issues.

Take health care as an example. The democrats have historically been in bed with the trial lawyers. They went as far as putting one on their ticket in 2004. As a practicing cardiologist, I can tell you that doctors blood would boil every time we heard John Edwards tell you he was proud of his law career. That he was fighting for the little guy. In fact, he was suing good North Carolina country doctors. Most of the time with very little evidence of true malpractice, and with plenty of questionable courtroom antics. It is these same trial lawyers, with a huge lobby in Washington, who have made the practice of medicine very difficult and very expensive for the country. Any politician who tells you that the cost of defensive medicine is minimal is just wrong, and has not spent enough time in the trenches with the practitioners of health care. On the other side, the republicans have historically been close allies with big business. One of the most annoying aspects of being a physician is having insurance companies mandate how we treat patients. I have to personally call the medical directors of insurance companies daily to try and get the tests that I order approved. For these insurance companies to deny tests that have reasonable medical indications, in order to post bigger profits is just shameful. This is a simplification of a much more complex issue, but illustrates how both parties contribute to the problem, as is the case for most of the issues that the American people face. To simplify the issues even more, so that one party or the other is the only blame for a given problem, just underestimates the ability of the American people to think through these complex issues. (Note to Nancy Pelosi: When your response to every crisis in America is "Oh, that damn President Bush", we know that there is much more to it. So stop insulting our intelligence, and start working together to move this country forward. That's why we hired you!)

Let's start having balanced discussions, recognizing that the candidate you are rooting for ( as well as the other candidate), has opinions you agree with and some that you do not. That way, no matter who is elected into office come November, you will know what their position is on each issue, and can speak out if you don't agree with their position on that issue. I feel passionately about improving the physician-patient relationship. We built VideoMD.com to help physicians use technology to improve this relationship. I plan to watch the next president closely, whether it is President Obama, or President McCain, to make sure that they take steps to improve the most important relationship in medicine, that between a doctor and his/her patients.

VideoMD.com

Welcome to my blog. This first blog will serve as an introduction to VideoMD.com. However, I plan to discuss many issues in healthcare on this blog in the future.

VideoMD.com is a new website that focuses on physician generated video health information. One of the main goals of VideoMD is to help physicians fully educate their own patients. Since patients are getting quite a bit of health information from the internet, we want to help doctors be more involved in their own patients health searches. The technology of VideoMD is fairly simple, doctors upload videos to the website. Then their patients search for them by name, and see their videos on an individual page of VideoMD. Basically a "YouTube" for doctors for patient education.

The idea for physicians is to fully educate their patients without adding the extra time it would take to educate each patient individually. Doctors days are so busy, not only seeing the patients, but also filling out all of the paperwork, and dealing with hospitals and insurance companies. All of the added work has taken away from the time that we can spend with each patient. This is way to increase the "face to face time" for doctors and patients, but now in 2008 it can be done virtually on VideoMD.com.

We then take the "best of" videos and use these for the featured videos page of VideoMD. All of the videos in the featured videos section is reviewed for medical content. One of our other goals is to build the most comprehensive library of video health information on the web. Our featured videos are easily searched by category, disease/condition, and by keyword.

We see VideoMD.com as a way to improve the global physician-patient relationship, by having your own doctors as well as some of the pre-eminent leaders in their field of medicine deliver up to date, trustworthy health information.