A worrisome new consensus in the medical community holds that doctors should be as concerned with politics as they are with medicine.
A worrisome new consensus in the medical community holds that doctors should be as concerned with politics as they are with medicine.
‘W e again discussed . . . the importance of voting and the safety, security, and effectiveness of voting by mail.”
These probably aren’t the words you’d expect to see in a medical record. Yet that’s what a medical professional at a prominent northeastern hospital wrote earlier this year after seeing a patient. The record, a de-identified version of which was provided to my organization, shows a new and profoundly concerning trend in medicine: Leftists are making the doctor’s office a major cog in their voter-registration and turnout machine.
The movement has been building since at least 2020, growing out of the woke fixation with so-called “social determinants of health.” This concept holds that medical professionals should be as concerned with welfare, housing, and climate policy as they are with diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medications.
As the argument goes, such policies affect patient health, so health care has a duty to shape them. In 2022, the American Medical Association — which is thoroughly captured by woke ideologues — passed a resolution asserting that “voting is a social determinant of health.”
Statements from such influential sources signal to medical employers and educators that doctors should make voter registration a central part of their work. Medical journals are applying further pressure by publishing a slew of opinion articles and tendentious studies arguing that voter registration in medical settings will improve health equity.
Having practiced and worked in academic medicine for 50-plus years, I know that when the New England Journal of Medicine says jump, the medical establishment collectively leaps.
Sure enough, the Association of American Medical Colleges is now helping medical schools and teaching hospitals provide voter-registration services. It’s partnering with a third-party group called Vot-ER, which bills itself as developing “nonpartisan civic engagement tools for every corner of the healthcare system.”
Founded in 2020, Vot-ER boasts of working with more than 500 hospitals and 50,000 medical professionals and claims to have helped “tens of thousands of Americans register and prepare to vote.”
But the claims of nonpartisanship are laughable. Vot-ER is funded by a who’s who of major left-wing donors. It has also forged a close relationship with the Biden administration. In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order directing federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, to expand voter-registration opportunities.
Vot-ER staffers subsequently joined a meeting of administration officials and left-wing groups to plan the order’s implementation. Such collusion raises obvious concerns that the group — which promotes “community mobilization techniques” — is targeting potential voters who are most likely to support liberal politicians and causes.
Vot-ER has been documented advocating for abortion access, discussing gun violence, pushing environmental regulations, and alleging medical racism. In the context of discussions with patients about voter registration, such positions all but indicate that it’s pushing patients in a leftist direction.
Ditto Vot-ER’s emphasis on “health equity.” Across medicine, that’s generally code for supporting divisive and even discriminatory policies, such as preferential access to treatment by race, in a misguided attempt to end all-too-real health disparities.
Whether led by Vot-ER, the AAMC, or anyone else, none of these efforts will ultimately improve patient health. Yes, voting and civic engagement matter. But it’s dangerous to say that medical professionals should spend precious time on anything but actual health care, which they are uniquely able to provide.
The average doctor’s appointment is only ten to 15 minutes. When a physician spends even a few minutes talking about voter registration or voting by mail, that’s time that should have been spent grasping a patient’s medical condition or helping them understand a treatment regimen.
Think of what physicians should be telling patients. Showing them how to use an EpiPen correctly — or giving them personalized nutritional guidance — could improve health or even save their life in short order. Talking about voting never will.
As someone who spent five decades seeing patients, I often found myself wishing I had more time to help them. I never found myself with minutes to spare discussing politics.
It remains to be seen how this activist campaign will influence the 2024 election, though it would be naïve to assume it will have no effect. Doctors are viewed as trustworthy sources of information, and when they urge their patients to register to vote or cast a ballot, that’s liable to leave a mental mark.
That’s surely why leftists targeted the medical profession in the first place. They see a chance to advance their agenda — no matter the cost to Americans’ health.