Those with a brain fully understand the press is doing their best to twist the poll into the lie that physicians prefer a public plan over private. Given a choice of one or the other, there was a 3-1 preference for private, even in this poll.

The IBD poll and the NEJM poll ask two fundamentally different questions: The former asks whether docs support Congress’ plan while the latter asks specifically about a public option. First, the IBD poll doesn’t specify which plan, given that there are multiple proposals in both the house and the senate, and doesn’t ask doctors specifically what in the plans they support or oppose. There is both liberal opposition and conservative opposition to various proposals in each of the plans (i.e. anyone who supports single payer could easily express opposition to the Congressional plans.) The NEJM poll is equally problematic in that it asks only about a theoretical “public option” removing it from the context of the much maligned Congressional plans. And the third question from the IBD poll borders on a push poll. While I agree the disparity is unusually large, the differences in the poll’s themselves likely account for at least some of the difference.

This NEJM cover-up of its political ties is proof that NEJM cannot be believed.

——

RE: General Questions and Comments: The Regressivity of Taxing Employer-Paid

Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:36 AM

From: “Guth, Lindsay”

To: XXXXX@yahoo.com

Dear Mr. XXX,

Thank you for your feedback.

Perspective articles are opinion-oriented — not research-oriented — so relevant affiliations are not against our policy for these articles.

Sincerely,

Lindsay Guth
Perspective Researcher
New England Journal of Medicine
P: 617-487-6539
F: 781-207-6529
lguth@nejm.org

—–Original Message—–

From: NEJM, Customer

Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 10:56 AM

To: NEJM Editorial; NEJM, Comments

Cc: Johnson, Louisa

Subject: FW: General Questions and Comments: The Regressivity of Taxing Employer-Paid

Dear Colleague,

I am forwarding the customer comments appearing below which pertain to your area. I have responded to this customer advising that their comments have been forwarded to the appropriate area within the company.

Sincerely,
Judy Benford
Customer Service Representative
nejmcust@mms.org

—–Original Message—–

From: XXXX@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 6:53 PM
To: NEJM, Customer
Subject: General Questions and Comments: The Regressivity of Taxing Employer-Paid

To the Editors:

about this –

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/10/e101

The Regressivity of Taxing Employer-Paid Health Insurance

Did the NEJM feel the need *not* to identify the two authors as the founders of the MD single-payer group “Physicians for a National Health Program?”

http://www.pnhp.org/

Why? Reputable publications fully disclose their writers’ major memberships.

Very, very disappointing.

This supports the claims that NEJM is very biased to one political group.

case in point, the headline on usatoday.com right now about the crap study that proves that not having health insurance kills you from the association to socialize medicine.

“The majority of physicians (63%) said they support a mixture of public and private plans”

Author contradicts herself in her own article. The question that got the 63% response was whether physicians favored giving the public a CHOICE of a public plan like Medicare (“like Medicare” was the wording in the question) or private plans.

Favoring a CHOICE of A or B does not mean the respondent favors one or the other. Yet everywhere the state-run media ran headlines that “Physicians favor public option”.

Journalistic incompetence, or bias.

I am in the doctors lunch room at my hospital every single day and no one is in favor of this.

Also I noticed a study that said that 45,000 people die each year because they don’t have insurance and it’s from a group that wants to make sure that there is socialized medicine. Well I’m amazed their study proved that. sarcasm implied.