The Republican Party is harnessing the furious debate over health care to raise campaign cash from doctors, dangling the promise of including donors’ names in advertising that attacks President Barack Obama’s overhaul plan.
The GOP’s House campaign arm says it has raised $1.3 million since June by targeting thousands of physicians across the country with phone calls and faxes, inviting them to join the fight “against any proposal that creates a government-run health care system in America.”
Some 5,000 doctors have donated, said GOP spokesman Paul Lindsay, and another 10,000 have lent their names as supporters without donating.
Some of the appeals also have gone astray. Paul Kramer, an occupational and family medicine doctor in Henderson, Ky., initially liked the idea when he was called about joining the Physicians’ Council for Responsible Reform, but then perceived it as “a bald fundraising effort.”
“When I told the woman I wouldn’t be interested in making any financial contribution, the call was quickly ended. I want reform and wanted to tell them that not all physicians were interested in seeing this effort tank,” Kramer said. “I never got the chance.”
The campaign is not only an example of opportunistic fundraising, but also of how both parties are vying to show backing from the nation’s doctors, who polls indicate rank among the country’s most trusted professionals.
Obama had scores of doctors flanking him at the White House Monday as he spoke on the issue, members of a physicians group that supported his presidential campaign. Republicans responded with a conference call for reporters with former American Medical Association president Donald Palmisano and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., one of several GOP members of Congress who are doctors.
A brochure sent to the potential GOP contributors spells out how donors can benefit. A check for at least $5,000 earns a donor face time with “key decisionmakers” in Washington, and “media training” so they can enlist colleagues to join the effort, according to the document. Lesser contributors are promised such privileges as “special closed door briefings” or recognition on a Web site. (AP)
