Actually, there are six doctors, two nurses, and one dentist among the 60 plus new members of the House-and they all ran against the administration’s health care bill. The Daily Caller notes:
Robert Moffit, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, contends that the increase of medical practitioners in the House was a huge development, not just for repeal of Obama’s health care law, but also for the makeup of Congress generally.
“I think it is tremendous, I think it is a great development, largely because Congress has been dominated for so long by members of the legal profession,” he told TheDC. “It also is an indication of how the American Medical Association and professional medical organizations have failed to represent their own constituents. What is happening here is that members of the medical community are beginning to these issues into their own hands. They do not trust their lobbyist in Washington.”
The Daily Caller’s list of doctors and nurses in the House: Larry Bucshon, an Indiana thoracic surgeon; Joe Heck, a Nevada physician; Dan Benishek, a surgeon from Michigan; Renee Ellmers, a North Carolina nurse; Scott DesJarlais, a Tennessee general practitioner; Diane Black, a Tennessee nurse; Paul Gosar, a dentist in Arizona; Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist in Maryland; and Nan Hayworth, a New York ophthalmologist.
A slight majority of the public is already in favor of repealing the health care bill and replacing it with something that really improves medical care and lowers costs. These medical professionals can help make the case for an even broader mandate. As one of them told Byron York, “[Obamacare] will basically decimate the health care system in America. The number of doctors who are going to retire, and the number of young people who are no longer going to go into medicine, will be massive.”
So much for the notion that medical professionals support the current health care reform. (Our sister organization, Independent Women’s Voice, has produced a TV spot featuring female physicians who volunteered their time to get out the word, that urges voters to keep up the repeal pressure on politicians.)