[Guest post by Harold Pollack and Vivek Murthy]

Forbes has published another slam against health reform. This one is written by Sally Pipes, president, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. She is the author of a forthcoming book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare, put out by the conservative publishing juggernaut, Regnery. This follows Pipes’ previous volume, The Truth About Obamacare. We haven’t read this one; we presume the truth isn’t good.

Pipes fires standard broadsides against health reform, including the already-rebutted claim that because of the Affordable Care Act, “American families in the non-group market will see their premiums rise $2,100.” She also presents a more novel, in some ways more disturbing argument, when she claims that that America’s doctors oppose health reform:

Few people know more about our healthcare system than doctors working on the frontlines. Policymakers should pay heed to their indictment of Obamacare and revisit the disastrous law.

Pipes’ is probably right to say that “if physicians aren’t on board with Obamacare, it won’t work.” The rest of her argument is wrong.

To prove her point, Pipes cites a survey by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. This survey highlights physicians’ anxieties regarding both health reform and the broader trends within the health care system. It provides some intriguing results. Although Pipes implies otherwise, respondents actually split down the middle in their reactions to the new law. Forty-four percent believe that the Act is “a good start.” Forty-four percent believe that “it is a step in the wrong direction.” These responses strikingly differed across generational lines. Fifty-nine percent of physician-respondents between the ages of 50 and 59 believe that the Act is “a step in the wrong direction.” Only 36 percent of their counterparts between the ages of 25 and 39 gave the same response.