How the AMA Sold Out Doctors, Patients for Obamacare

by Nadia Naffe

During the healthcare debate conservatives spent months trying to figure out why the leadership of the American Medical Association signed the nation’s doctors up in support of Obamacare.

obamacare

The AMA endorsed Obamacare when member physicians were fiercely opposed. The groups early support was one factor that contributed to the bill’s passage, contrary to the expressed will of the majority of member physicians.

The answer lies in the AMA’s revenue stream. The AMA has been a puppet of the government since the early 1990’s in order to protect their multi-million dollar monopoly on the CPT coding system that all doctors have to use to bill Medicare and insurance companies, the licensing of which provides the AMA over 70 percent of its income.

The AMA earns only a fraction of its revenue from dues it receives from doctors, representing only 17 percent of doctors nationwide, according to their website. The lion’s share of AMA’s revenue, about $118M, comes from the sale of copyright publishing of billing codes for medical procedures and services.

How the AMA made medical code writing a multimillion dollar business

Before CPT Codes existed and when ICD-9-CM codes were just being developed, doctors had to write out in words what symptoms a patient had, what the diagnosis most likely was, and what visits, services, and procedures they thought they should get paid for. Then in 1966 Current Procedural Terminology or CPT was designed by the AMA to assist doctors in billing Medicare and health providers using codes. Doctors use the CPT Codes to specify to health care providers the service rendered so that they can get paid.

Headquartered in Chicago (Obama’s hometown, no citation needed), the AMA also controls the CPT Editorial Panel and CPT Advisory Committee, along with the staff which is responsible for editing, adding, and deleting CPT Codes.

Until now, doctors had rarely been politically active (unlike lawyers); their tendency was to back away, knowing they could do little as individuals. For years the membership ranks of the AMA have dwindled, but when the AMA betrayed the very people it was ostensibly meant to represent, doctors began organizing on their own.

“No one came to the forefront of the medical debate for the good of the doctor-patient relationship,” said Dr. Joe Whitaker, who founded the United States Medical Association to repeal Obamacare. “Government run healthcare is impossible to afford and impossible to implement.”

The AMA endorsed Obamacare as a way to protect its medical coding monopoly with the federal government, in-turn, the Obama Administration recieved the medical communities support for socialized healthcare – that was the deal. “Dollars are driving the entire process,” said Dr. Whitaker. “Doctors and patients want a national voice different from the AMA that is not controlled by the educational elite.”

Now, we know why doctors were standing behind the President in lab coats during the healthcare PR events at the White House.


Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted Jul 2nd 2010 at 6:33 am in Congress, Healthcare, News, Obama | 59 Comments