January 01, 2012

Dr. Vivek Murthy, a hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is a passionate advocate for reforming the health care system. When he’s not seeing patients, teaching, or conducting research, he’s encouraging his colleagues to lobby state and federal lawmakers on health care issues ranging from the need for more loan repayment programs for physicians to the importance of federal funding for preventive health services.

In 2008, he helped start "Doctors for Obama," a group of about 10,000 physicians and medical students who supported then presidential candidate Barack Obama and his health reform platform. A year later, the group was reborn as "Doctors for America," a nonprofit organization that now boasts more than 15,000 members. It has no official ties to President Obama’s reelection campaign or to any political party. During 2009-2010, Doctors for America mobilized physicians to ensure their ideas helped to shape the content of the Affordable Care Act. The group is now launching a campaign to train physicians around the country to educate the public about the impact of the health reform law.

Courtesy White House Dr. Vivek Murthy shaking hands with President Obama

In addition to his role as president of Doctors for America, Dr. Murthy serves on the President's Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health, a group that provides policy recommendations on chronic disease prevention and management, health promotion, and integrative health care practices. In an interview with Hospitalist News, Dr. Murthy explained why physicians need to be politically active, and how his political activism has changed his interactions with patients.

Hospitalist News: Why did you decide to start Doctors for America?

Dr. Murthy: I decided to start Doctors for America during the 2008 presidential election, when health care was a priority issue. Like many others, I recognized that familiar players, such as insurers and pharma companies, would play a role in sharing the health reform platforms of the candidates and ultimately a health reform bill. However, I was struck by how few physicians were organizing and gathering their ideas to actually make an impact on the candidates’ platforms and, ultimately, on a health reform bill. A few colleagues and I began Doctors for America with a simple belief that physicians should play a leadership role in designing and running our nation’s health care system. That started with enabling physicians to shape and inform what would become the next major health reform law.

HN: Why is it important to you to be politically active?

Dr. Murthy: I haven’t really been politically active for most of my life. I didn’t even follow policy very much. But what became apparent to me a few years ago was that the only way we physicians were going to create a health care system that functioned well for patients and for doctors was if we got involved in helping to build it. It’s not that as physicians we know all the answers; we don’t. But what’s important is that we do have a unique view of the health care system. As individual physicians and also as leaders in our community, we can play a role in helping to give more voice to the perspective of physicians and patients. If these perspectives are missing as our health care system is being redesigned, then we’re not going to have a system that ultimately works.

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