Dr. George W. Bush calling

Take a 12-point buck, tape a global positioning device to its rear end and send the location signal to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. Unless things change, that buck would appear to have a better chance of surviving the next hunting season than the best interests of the American patient have of surviving the presidency of George W Bush.

There is no need to read tea leaves to make that prediction accurately; one needs only to read the news and follow the cash. Days into the new Bush administration’s tenure there were signs that this four-year visit to Dr. George W. Bush was going to hurt patient interests just a little bit. Within weeks a more painful reality has become apparent; the American patient will be lucky to get out of this experience with all four extremities still attached.

The months since the election have seen lobbyists against basic patient interests gather to shoot those interests like fish in the barrel, that barrel being a Republican-controlled the U.S. Congress and a White House more corporate than Republican or Democrat. The first victim was new workplace injury prevention rules. Estimated by some to cost as much as $9 billion to implement but to save more than that in prevented injuries, the rules were killed by the new administration faster than you could say carpal tunnel syndrome.

Shooting at this fish were the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Wholesale Distributors, and the National Association of Manufacturers. Their price to be at the barrel was $1.4 million to the Bush campaign, $20 million to Republicans in other races, $1.8 million to the Bush inauguration.

Next came the president’s pirouette on carbon dioxide emission reduction, a concept Bush had supported during the campaign when he desperately needed to convince voters he would not let the rest of America become as much of an environmental mess as Texas. Carbon dioxide emissions are a key cause of global warming, and the associated burning of fossil fuels is a key cause of respiratory illness. The coal, utility and petrochemical industries that have opposed such regulations were huge supporters of Bush in Texas and in his presidential campaign. What must have smelled sweet as a payday for those interests will stink for the rest of us.

No industry has bought itself a better place at the barrel than Big Tobacco. Karl Rove, the strategic brain behind Bush, spent five years as a political consultant for Philip Morris, America’s biggest tobacco company. A former Philip Morris PR executive is the new White House liaison to American business. Former U.S. Sen. Tommy Thompson, Bush’s secretary of Health and Human Services and America’s most important health care bureaucrat, was heavily supported in his most recent Senate campaign by the tobacco industry. Haley Barbour, formerly the chairman of the Republican Party, now lobbies for a British tobacco company.

The target fish in the barrel for Big Tobacco include the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco marketing and the Justice Department suit against tobacco companies for lying to Congress about whether they believed nicotine was addictive. Sushi, anyone?

Hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and the health insurance industry have nailed their first fish – new federal rules that would have increased protection for the privacy of patients’ medical records. Implementation of the rules has been held up by the Bush administration, and chances of the rules future in that trap are no better than a lobster’s in a pot.

America’s hospitals, incidentally, will be well represented in the Bush administration; the former president of the Federation of American Hospitals is now the head of the Health Care Finance Administration, the federal agency that, more than any other, regulates American hospitals.

The credit card industry, which donated almost $1.5 million to Bush and $25 million to Republicans last year, stood at the barrel this month and blasted consumer bankruptcy protection out of the water. Now the country without universal health care has a bankruptcy law that does not even protect patients and families forced into bankruptcy by catastrophic health care costs, costs which are estimated to cause 40 percent of private bankruptcies. That is a pimple on the forehead of this nation that ought to make it hide its face in shame.

The trampling of patient interests is not a Democratic or Republican issue. We are all patients sooner or later, and among the fish still in the barrel are some which have strong support from core Republican constituencies, including a patient bill of rights and prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients.

Working-class Americans supported Bush in droves last November. In his rush to pay off those who gave him millions of dollars for his campaign last year Bush had best remember the interests of those who gave him millions of votes. He has failed miserably to do so thus far, raising real questions not about whether he is a Republican or a Democrat, but about whether he is for sale.

Erik Steele, D.O. is the administrator for emergency services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and is on the staff for emergency department coverage at six hospitals in the Bangor Daily News coverage area.