House of Medicine is in Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Madam Speaker, the house of medicine is crumbling down.

I have been a physician now for 35 years, and I spent 10 years prior to that training to become a surgeon. However, the house of medicine is in crisis.

Since the pandemic, medicine, a truly objective science, has become political. It has become a field of activism, not advocacy: believe the science, and then don't trust the science.

The record of preauthorizations now facing physicians and surgeons leads to poor patient care, burnout, early retirement, and massive administrative costs. Insurance companies are raking in record profits for their CEOs and shareholders by denying patients critical medicine or procedures and then not paying the doctors or hospitals, the ones who actually deliver the care.

The cost of medications is skyrocketing. One primary reason is something called PBMs, pharmacy benefit managers, that most people don't know anything about. These things are extortion artists driven by insurance companies to steal money from pharmaceutical companies and, most importantly, patients.

Madam Speaker, a pet peeve of mine is every other commercial seen on television is direct-to-consumer advertising. We are only one of two countries in the world, New Zealand being the other one, that allows this.

I have never once in my 35 years in medicine prescribed a medicine that was because somebody advertised it on television. Now, we have hospital closures in every district because we are restricting access to care because Medicare and Medicaid do not pay the bills. Yet, we have Democrats screaming: Medicare for All. That absolutely would lower the standard of medicine.

The express purpose of the ACA, ObamaCare, is to drive private practice out of business and for us all to be under one government- payer system.

What is happening? We are now employing more and more doctors and delivering a lower standard of care. These doctors, good people, really now have more ownership to a clock than their patient. We no longer have the work ethic that is seen in doctors as was seen before. It is 5 o'clock. It is time to leave. There is an absolute loss of patient ownership.

Madam Speaker, when I was seeing patients full time, if a physician called me to see a patient, my answer was: Do you want me to see them today or tomorrow?

It was not: Send them to the emergency room.

Now, it takes a year. I tried to get an appointment with a dermatologist for a patient. It took a year because of the severe doctor shortage. It is estimated that 40,000 to 120,000 more doctors are needed in a decade.

Sadly enough, our medical schools, while they are increasing in numbers, are failing in the doctors that they produce. We now have more identity politics in medical schools than excellence in care. Activism in so many schools now is the oath. DEI is the oath to get into medical school. This needs to stop.

It has now been shown that 63 percent of medical students now in medical school do not plan on practicing clinical medicine. There are medical students who come, take up a slot, and rarely practice. Why are medical schools allowing these individuals to get in?

There are increasing numbers of fellowships after residency programs because we have work-hour limitations, and the students are just not well-trained to come out and practice.

Burnout is at a record high, sadly, amongst physicians. I can understand that in a physician who has practiced until they are 65 or 70, but now we have millennials coming out of medical school that have high burnout rates.

The AAMC, the Association of American Medical Colleges, is more concentrated on activism than excellence.

With doctors' pay being cut yet again, what do Senate Democrats and House Democrats want to do in a time of a critical doctor shortage? Cut physician pay yet again. There has been a 26 percent cut over the last 20 years. If you buy hammers for a store, how can you sell them at 40 cents and expect to stay in business?

I ran a surgical practice for many, many years. I knew where every paperclip went. You can't stay in business. We want to drive physicians out of private practice and into physician unemployment.

My colleagues can't do this to medicine. Why has physician pay become a partisan issue? We are destroying the trust in the patient-doctor relationship. Physicians are leaving because they can't get paid and physician burnout.

Madam Speaker, the house of medicine is in crisis.

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