For Doctors in Congress, Little Harmony on Health Care

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For Doctors in Congress, Little Harmony on Health Care

By ANDREA FULLER
Published: July 11, 2009


WASHINGTON — In the struggle to overhaul the nation’s health care system, 16 physicians have ended up in ringside seats — as members of the House and Senate.

But they have taken different lessons from their experiences in medicine, and they do not agree on what a bill should look like.

“Doctors are very individualistic,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and an obstetrician. “We all think we’re right.”

Of the doctors elected to Congress, 11 are Republicans and 5 are Democrats. Two serve in the Senate and 14 in the House, 7 of whom are on the three committees preparing a health care bill.

Both Democratic and Republican doctors can recall patients who had inadequate insurance or none at all.

Representative Steve Kagen, a Wisconsin Democrat first elected in 2006, was an allergist whose patients included two asthmatic children of a single mother who were so ill that they could not go to school. He wrote prescriptions, but a few weeks later, the children returned to the office still suffering.

“She unzipped her bag, and she pulled out the same prescriptions,” Dr. Kagen said. “She said, ‘I went to the pharmacy, I could see the medicine my kids need and I can’t afford to buy it.’ ”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/health/policy/12docs.html?hpw