Health Reform’s Call: Physician, Campaign Thyself : Many are tossing their stethoscopes into the ring, despite facing pay cuts. Their concern is medicine’s future.

Under normal circumstances, high-paid physicians seldom aspire to lower-paying jobs. But with health care reform rising to the top of the nation’s political agenda, a surprising number are willing to trim their incomes for a seat in Congress.

“I’m running for a pay cut,” said Brenda Fitzgerald. The Georgia obstetrician-gynecologist is one of two dozen physicians--19 of them Republicans--who have either declared their candidacies or have strongly indicated that they intend to run for Congress in 1994.

Reps. J. Roy Rowland (D-Ga.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) are the only physicians now in Congress. McDermott is author of a bill to provide national health insurance for all Americans--a measure that most, if not all, of the physician candidates oppose.

In California, at least three incumbents are likely to be challenged by doctors.

If a health care reform bill passes Congress this year, as expected, candidates elected in November would be sworn into office too late to vote on the issue. But their candidacies will likely influence the deliberations by focusing attention on the medical Establishment’s criticism of President Clinton’s health care reform proposal.

“We will help to shed the light of truth” on the Clinton plan, said Irwin Savodnik, a Torrance psychiatrist seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey).

While none of the physicians is running solely on the health care issue, all have indicated it was a factor in their decision. Fitzgerald, who has left her practice to seek the GOP nomination to challenge Rep. George (Buddy) Darden (D-Ga.), sees it as “a continuation of my decision to take care of patients.”

Not surprisingly, most Republican physicians who are running--including all three likely California candidates--are adamantly opposed to the Clinton plan. Morton Levine, a Northern California pediatrician who expects to challenge Rep. Dan Hamburg (D-Ukiah), said he will warn voters to be wary of Clinton’s big-government solution.

“Big Sister--that’s Hillary (Rodham) Clinton--has got some scary things in mind for us,” Levine said.

Furthermore, the doctors think that their expertise is sorely needed in Congress these days. “I’m in the middle of this,” said John Steel, a urologist who has resigned as chief of staff at Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego to run as a Republican against Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-San Diego). “There is nobody like me in Congress.”

Because American physicians currently earn an average annual salary of $170,600, most will be earning less if they are elected to a $133,644-a-year seat in Congress.

And while many admit to using their personal wealth to finance their campaigns, all expect to get big contributions from like-minded doctors who are also upset with the Clinton health care plan.

But none sees the income issue as an obstacle. In fact, Greg Ganske, a Republican running for Congress in Iowa, said he assumes that because he is leaving his job as a well-paid plastic surgeon, voters may be willing to trust him more than they would a career politician.

“They will know I’m not doing it for financial gain, and people generally tend to like their doctors,” Ganske observed.

Like Ganske, many of the physician-candidates indicated they will emphasize their lack of experience in politics to try to appeal to voters who distrust incumbents.

On the other hand, Levine said he has become so disillusioned with the practice of medicine that he views entering politics as an opportunity for a career change. As he sees it, solo practitioners like himself are becoming “dinosaurs” with the current emphasis in medicine on managed care and cost-cutting.

Two doctors are seeking Senate posts. Perhaps the best-known physician in the 1994 race is Bernadine P. Healy, the former National Institutes of Health director, who is running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio). Her chief Republican primary rival is Lt. Gov. Mike DeWine.