http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/health/policy/30docs.htmlAs Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: May 30, 2011
AUGUSTA, Me. — With Republicans in complete control of Maine’s state government for the first time since 1962, State Senator Lois A. Snowe-Mello offered a bill in February to limit doctors’ liability that she was sure the powerful doctors’ lobby would cheer. Instead, it asked her to shelve the measure. Gordon Smith of the Maine Medical Association, testifying, says he's “less comfortable” with Republican positions on health care.
Shifting Priorities
“It was like a slap in the face,” said Ms. Snowe-Mello, who describes herself as a conservative Republican.
“The doctors in this state are increasingly going left.”snip
But doctors are changing. They are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals, particularly in the North, but increasingly in the South as well. Half of all younger doctors are women, and that share is likely to grow. There are no national surveys that track doctors’ political leanings, but as more doctors move from business owner to shift worker,
their historic alliance with the Republican Party is weakening from Maine as well as South Dakota, Arizona and Oregon, according to doctors’ advocates in those and other states.That change could have a profound effect on the nation’s health care debate. Indeed, after opposing almost every major health overhaul proposal for nearly a century, the American Medical Association supported President Obama’s legislation last year because the new law would provide health insurance to the vast majority of the nation’s uninsured, improve competition and choice in insurance, and promote prevention and wellness, the group said. Because so many doctors are no longer in business for themselves, many of the issues that were once priorities for doctors’ groups, like insurance reimbursement, have been displaced by public health and safety concerns, including mandatory seat belt use and chemicals in baby products.
snip
Mr. Smith still goes to the State Capitol wearing gray suits, black wingtips and a gold name badge, but he increasingly finds himself among allies far more casually dressed, including the liberal Maine People’s Alliance and labor groups. And while he still greets old Republican friends — he is a lobbyist, after all — he spends much of his time strategizing with Democrats. Representative Sharon Anglin Treat, a powerful Democrat who was first elected in 1990, said that she and Mr. Smith were once bitter foes. “But Gordon’s become like a consumer activist,” she said with a big smile. “I’ve seen him more times in the last few years than I can count.” Dr. Nancy Cummings, a 51-year-old orthopedic surgeon in Farmington, is the kind of doctor who has changed Mr. Smith’s life. She trained at Harvard, but after her first son was born she began rethinking 18-hour workdays. “My husband used to drive my son to the hospital so that I could nurse him,” she said. “I decided that I really wanted to be a good surgeon, but also wanted to raise healthy, well-adjusted kids I would actually see.”
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