Posted on Sun, Nov. 01, 2009

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Why I went to D.C. to support health reform

By Robyn Liu

About 150 doctors from all 50 states went to Washington, D.C., on Oct. 5 and were addressed by President Obama in the Rose Garden. Maybe you saw it and wondered who went to represent Kansas. Well, that was me. I went as a member of the group Doctors for America.

I am a native of Belleville, a 2003 graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, and now a full-time practicing family physician in Tribune. I am board-certified in family medicine and also in preventive medicine and public health, and I have a master's degree in public health with special focus on health care management and policy. I am employed by Greeley County Health Services, and I'm one of five family doctors who together spread out to serve Greeley, Hamilton and Wallace counties in western Kansas.

I take care of my patients in the clinic, the hospital, the emergency room, the long-term care facility, their homes and even in the grocery store, if that is what's required. I am a womb-to-tomb doctor, which means I am responsible for the health care of pregnant women, infants, children, adolescents, men, women, the elderly and those at the end of their life journeys.

I make a difference out here. So why would I leave at the drop of a hat just to go sit outside the White House and hear the president speak for eight minutes? (On my own dime, I might add.) What was I hoping to accomplish there? What were any of us hoping for?

Here is something our president understands: People do not trust politicians. They don't trust insurance companies or drug companies or hospital CEOs. People do trust their doctors.

What's more, doctors are the ones who understand better than anyone why the health care system needs to be changed. We are the ones who deliver the babies of the diabetic mothers who could have avoided so many complications if they'd had access to prenatal care. We are the ones who sit with newly diagnosed cancer patients and look into their pleading eyes when they ask why their insurance coverage was dropped and what they are supposed to do now.

Cameras follow Obama wherever he goes and record whatever he says. So he invited us, regular old day-to-day practicing MDs, to join him in the Rose Garden. The cameras showed up, too. The president gave a short address to encourage us to keep up the good fight. He shook our hands, and then he left — and we turned around to face the cameras.

Doctors from the audience were interviewed on major news outlets and quite a lot of minor ones. After we left the Rose Garden, the interviews continued. All afternoon, newspapers and TV and radio stations from across the country called, wanting to speak to their state's doctor.

I have to be careful about voicing my political views too loudly — after all, I live and work in Kansas, and my profession requires that I earn the trust of my patients. Despite my passionate belief in the health care reform work that's happening, I have largely kept politics out of the exam room — and rightly so.

But everyone in my community now knows that I went to Washington and sat with the president. And because they trust me, they are willing to come to me with their fears and confusion. I have been able to correct some of their misperceptions and relate what's really being talked about to their own real-life experiences.

It's a tiny impact I'm having in a tiny town in a state whose representatives wouldn't vote for health care reform if Bob Dole himself thought it was a good idea (oh, wait — he does). But it's something to be one more voice speaking truth, and to feel like somebody's actually listening. That's why I went to Washington.

Robyn Liu wrote this commentary for the blog ForwardKansas.com.

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