President Obama has invited a select group of 50 medical doctors (as opposed to Ph.D. types) to the White House for a health care event today. And by select, we mean members of the advocacy group, Doctors for America. From the website: “On Monday, practicing doctors from all fifty states are going to the White House to tell the country what all of us at Doctors for America know: That we deserve a better health system and we’re ready to fight to make it happen.”

Doctors for America is, as Politico’s Ben Smith put it, “a reincarnation of Doctors for Obama, an arm of the Obama campaign that boasted more than 10,000 members.”

As a counterpoint, three former presidents of the America Medical Association write an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, “What We Would Have Told Obama“:

We aren’t among the doctors invited to a Rose Garden event today to “join the President in pushing for health insurance reform this year and [who] have offered their help and support,” as a White House press release put it. It’s unfortunate only supporters of the president’s plans will be there. Mr. Obama has missed an opportunity to learn more about the real issues facing patients and doctors and to formulate a plan that truly puts patients in control with doctors as trusted advisers.

The United States has the best health care in the world today, and thanks to the ever-expanding frontiers of science and medical innovation the brightest days are ahead. It is true that there are Americans who fall through the cracks of our medical system every day—and as a caring nation, we must do what we can to expand access to medical care to those who need it. But this can be accomplished without a costly and inefficient government overhaul of the entire system. One easy reform would be to enable individuals to buy policies offered in any state, not just where they live. This will enhance competition. But more government-run health insurance will only lead to disaster.

From Mother Jones, a reasonable assessment of President Obama’s speech Monday to the American Medical Association and his seriousness in agreeing (vaguely) with legal reform to help curb health care costs, “Doctors Boo Obama“:

Hillary Clinton tried this same anti-lawsuit gambit back in the early 1990s and we all know how well that worked out.  Obama’s situation is probably even more hopeless because he’s making promises that the AMA must know he can’t keep. Here’s why: As a constitutional law professor, Obama knows well that most of the legal measures doctors support to reduce “defensive medicine,” including the much vaunted “health court” proposals, are fundamentally unconstitutional. They tend to violate people’s Seventh Amendment rights to a jury trial, among other things. Moreover, with Democrats running the House and Senate, restrictions on medical malpractice lawsuits are most likely dead on arrival.

It’s not just trial lawyer money that will doom the effort. Trial lawyers don’t have nearly as much money as doctors and insurance companies, for one thing. But also, there are some powerful lawyers in Congress who will put up a big fight on this one on principle. Among them: Republican senator and onetime trial lawyer Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, who voted against malpractice reform bills in 2003 and 2004. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), another former trial lawyer, has also been a reliable opponent of lawsuit restrictions. Obama’s own vice president might pose the biggest obstacle to any attempt to limit malpractice suits. Joe Biden was a trial lawyer himself (as is his brother and son, Beau), and the biggest donors during his political career have been fellow plaintiff attorneys. Biden has never once supported a tort reform bill in Congress; it seems unlikely he would start supporting such proposals now.

Don’t underestimate trial lawyer influence; they’re a core constituency.