Bert, I think that the thread was long ago hijacked.
The thread has been hijacked in about six different directions...following up on one of them:
Congress and the AMA ARE the problem. And, while I am likely painting to broad a stroke, I don't think doctors have ever stood up against much of anything.
Doctors are a very heterogeneous lot. I think the AMA tries, but whom should it represent?...The times in which doctors had a common goal are long past.
The AMA is a dying dinosaur, only propped up by its steady income stream from the sale of CPT codes. They own them and ANYONE who uses them (Medicare, all the insurance companies) pay the AMA for their use. If you don't think that is a conflict of interest, what is? I mean how many of us are motivated to keep the RBRVS system in place...not many. But the AMA is totally dependent on it for financial survival. It dominates AMA's policy support in ways we can only guess at.
The AMA claims to have over 200,000 doctors, about 15% of all physicians in the country. Few people believe that number. It is a tiny, tiny sample but someone posted a thread on Sermo, "who still supports the AMA" and of 62 responses, not one answered favorably. There may be a few out there, but 200k is hard to fathom.
David, we are very heterogeneous. Specialists/pcp's, liberal/conservative, big government/private sector advocates. Maybe there was a time when we could have a single lobbying group speak for us (and maybe not) but it is hard for me to imagine any group now speaking for more than a fraction. Which of course plays right into the hands of the (rather unified) insurance industry, big pharma, and AHA.
