commentary
MY RX FOR BETTER HEALTH CARE POLICY
BY U.S. REP. MICHAEL C. BURGESS, MD Last December, Gallup released a poll that ranked the honesty and ethical perceptions of various professions. Topping the charts at 80-percent ap- proval were nurses, followed shortly behind by doctors at 65 percent. As you scroll down to the bottom of the report, you’ll find members of Con- gress— hanging on by a thread at just 7 percent. While I don’t propose to know how
to fix the image problem of Congress, I believe Gallup’s poll validates the need for more health care profession- als in the legislative process. If you are a doctor or a nurse, I
suspect you just glanced at your daily schedule and decided there would not be enough time to take on that burden. I know that reaction because it was the same one I had — up until 2001. For any of us, there can be a light-
bulb moment, a time when you ask yourself, “Am I doing what I am sup- posed to be doing?” For me, Sept. 11, 2001, was my lightbulb moment. But the process took a bit of an effort to get started.
For any candidate, the timeline can
be different, but I decided to call a trusted friend who had been elected to office in Texas. I had an idea to run for the U.S. House, but I needed a knowledgeable sounding board be- cause the very idea of me running for office seemed preposterous — so far was it outside my normal comfort zone. I expected her reaction to be dif- ferent, but she told me that I would be a good candidate for the open seat in Texas’ 26th district. My second call was to a consultant
who reacted more as I had expected. He began to discourage me and even asked me if I was prepared not only to lose but to come in dead last. What a blow to the ego that meeting was, but it was a good one in retrospect. Any candidate for office, especially one coming from the health care profes- sion, needs to prepare for the worst possible outcome. In a field where we always aim for the best possible out- come, that can be a big adjustment. The other lesson I learned in those
early days was just how valuable the trust I had built among my own prac-
tice and my network was to me. It was a careful balance to ask patients and colleagues for their vote without fall- ing into a position where I felt like I was asking too much. The confidence that patients place in their physicians is extraordinary, and I wanted to as- sure them their confidence would re- main a priority even after I took office. I was fortunate enough to have won that open seat in Texas and now have the opportunity to serve as a voice for health care in Congress. Just a few years after I began, the
health care debate heated up on Capi- tol Hill. A new president had moved into the White House and had decided to reform our industry. It was another lightbulb moment for the health care industry. The Republican House confer-
ence had six doctors as members be- fore the debate began; today, we have nearly 20. That’s a remarkable growth in just a short period of time, but still not quite enough to make a noticeable difference in the debate. For that reason, I now lead an ef- fort called the STAT Initiative (www
.statinitiative.org). The effort is de- signed not only to encourage health care professionals to run for office, but more importantly, to empower the voice of America’s patients. With- out a bullhorn to amplify the concerns of our members, the U.S. government
What is at stake here is the protection of patients.
April 2015 TEXAS MEDICINE 11
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