More press reports roll in on the Kerry-Edwards approach to medical malpractice issues, including discussions of the likely motive for giving those proposals a high profile: overcoming doctors' hostility to John Edwards.
Senator Kerry's hometown paper, the Boston Globe reports on the campaign's larger effort to re-define Sentaor Edwards as a Friend of Doctors, rather than as their longtime nemesis:
Since first running for the US Senate in 1998, John Edwards has been the politician many doctors dislike most -- a trial lawyer who amassed an eight-figure fortune from personal injury lawsuits and became a symbol of the soaring medical malpractice insurance premiums physicians must pay.
But there is another John Edwards that the Kerry-Edwards campaign is taking pains to introduce: a man whose past legal advocacy for patients stemmed from a passion for quality health care, for allowing doctors to make medical decisions instead of insurance companies, and for unfettered medical research.* * *
Behind the campaign's effort to recast Edwards lies a fear that doctors' anger over his trial-lawyer image could deprive the Democratic ticket of support from a medical constituency that is very much in play in this election. Polling data from recent elections show that doctors, who traditionally vote Republican, are moving toward Democrats because of concerns over health-care issues, including a patient bill of rights.
The medical profession makes up a sizable constituency: the article quotes an AMA figure putting the number of U.S. medical doctors about 853,000.
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, medical malpractice claims and premiums are very much on the minds of health care providers, according to this story in the Bucks County Courier Times, and John Edwards professional history of pursuing medical malpractice claims represents a sizable obstacle to earning those doctors' votes in November:
The hot topic this election season for many Pennsylvania doctors is skyrocketing liability insurance costs. Because of the incumbent president's position on the issue, many local doctors said he gets their vote.
'It's the main reason I am backing [President Bush],' said Dr. John Petolillo Jr., an orthopedic surgeon based in Middletown. Insurance carriers consider his field extremely high risk.
'It's important enough to back him solely on that issue,' Petolillo said.
First lady Laura Bush addressed about 300 white-coated doctors and other healthcare practitioners Monday at the Sheraton Bucks County hotel in Falls. Dressed in a gray suit and blue scarf, her honey-colored hair tidily coifed, Bush talked about her husband's position on medical liability insurance, healthcare reform, the economy and foreign policy. She also accepted the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Medical Society.
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Others at Monday's medical society event said the Democratic candidate for president, John Kerry, has alienated many doctors by choosing medical malpractice trial lawyer John Edwards as his running mate.
'Normally, we don't get involved with presidential issues,' said Dr. George Green, a board member of the Pennsylvania Medical Society. 'The choice of Edwards forced us.'
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