Newt Gingrich invited me to a party!

Today I received an invitation to an election day party from Newt Gingrich himself! Apparently I have “made the cut” as one of the 2010 Champions of Medicine and will receive a handsome certificate at an election day party at the historic Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. Newt has confided to me that he has worked tirelessly of the course of his career for health care reform. He understands that I have faced challenges during the Obama administration's first two years and that this year has been especially difficult for me with the “Democrat held Congress essentially dismantling the world’s greatest healthcare system and replacing it with the failed model of socialized medicine.”

Newt wants me at the party mainly because he wants to be surrounded by the best and brightest this country has to offer on the “night we set the wheels in motion to repeal Obamacare and replace it with real, meaningful reform.”

Wow.

I would love to go! I would have absolutely no hesitation in asking uncomfortable questions and spreading sedition among the gathered faithful. For all the good that would do. But life is so full of really great things to do that don’t involve being in Washington DC on election day. There are long walks to be taken in the woods. There are songs to be sung with friends. There is a conference to be organized about appropriate use of technology at our hospital. There is real information about what is going on in my field to be read and digested and maybe turned into essays on why the finest healthcare system in the world fails to take care of its own at an affordable price, and how it can be tweaked to face its challenges. There are stories that need to be heard, poems that need writing, children to be raised, jokes to be laughed at.

I’m still filled with questions about this invitation, though. How stupid does he think doctors are? Are we really stupid enough to think that the reform package dismantled the finest healthcare system in the world and replaced it with socialized medicine? Why invite me? I’m not even Republican. Could he have invited many thousands of doctors, and if so mustn’t he believe that his message would sway very few of them, since he can’t feed thousands of doctors dinner at the Ronald Reagan building? And if I did go, what are the choices of entree?

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