Doctors are increasingly unhappy with the lack of representation afforded them by ‘organized medicine’.
The creation of mini-HMOs (termed ‘Accountable Care Organizations’ by the PPACA legislation), already under construction even as the Obamacare legislation is being challenged/dismantled in D.C., only serves to further encumber physician autonomy and interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Add to this the pending further cuts to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement left without a proper ‘fix’, and we are saddled with a regrettable scenario wherein the ability for American physicians to make a living practicing their trade is rapidly diminishing.
The AMA’s President recently called Obamacare a “victory” all the while his organization’s membership shrinks to new lows (somewhere less than 15% of practicing doctors in America). Meanwhile, the AMA’s boss, the federal government, wields the sway of its annual $70-plus million dollar coding copyright royalty ‘gift’ to the AMA with great care to insure that doctors no longer direct that organization’s agenda.
The political left thinks it has gained a victory–even in the defense of a doomed piece of health care reform legislation–because it hangs on to the deluded notion that it has scored a moral victory for the underprivileged and under-served in America. Sadly, they are unable to acknowledge that the bulk of opposition to Obamacare in the population was initially spearheaded by physicians themselves–not out of self-serving impulses, but rather the ‘insider’ knowledge that (as we are seeing today) the law would never work.
Obamacare is a failure because it was woven together with false promises, misleading statistics, and the incorrect premise that government can actually deliver medical care to a diverse, heterogeneous population of 350 million people better than could the free-market. The fact that capitalism has made America the envy of the world never crossed the minds of the socialist-leaning academic and AMA-funded ‘leaders’ within the medical profession, who obviously never studied history, and may have never even run an independent medical practice in any community anywhere in the United States.
It was these anointed few (e.g., Dr. Zeke Emanuel? — who based his health care reform book on the foundation of a European-style Value Added Tax of 20-30%) who decided alone, and with unprecedented hubris, that they knew better than the up-to-recently silent majority of American physicians at large.
In the end, despite the strained, absurd and demeaning dribble put forth by editorial teams at such extremist media outlets like MSNBC and the Huffington Post/AOL, Obamacare will not survive to be an enduring piece of law in the United States. The Supreme Court’s review of the case is almost trivial at this point. Even a returning President Obama (seemingly unlikely at this point) cannot keep the law intact–and he knows it! The economy cannot survive the drain of resources, the absence of economically ‘healthy’ physician practices, and/or the dismissal of necessary competition to keep the bio-tech/bio-pharmaceutical industries humming with research and development for the next generation of American patients. The President’s ‘signature’ piece of legislation was allowed to destroy not only the economy and his chances for re-election, but also the very fabric of American medicine.
The damage already done by lossed physician practices, the early retirement of experienced doctors, the diminished reputation of the medical field as a career choice, and the foolish elevation of non-physician providers to fill the void of vacated M.D.s, may never be repaired.
Like the discarded CLASS Act, other elements of Obamacare will soon be thrown to the trash-heap of political history. Among those will be the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) and the misguided, overbearing, and unaffordable HIT (health information technology) rules.
Physicians know best what it takes to make health care reform work in America, and soon the AMA will understand this fact as it is replaced by a consortium of true medical leaders (who actually speak for the doctors they purport to represent) ‘around the table’ in Washington, D.C. These leaders, such as those at America’s Medical Society, will speak the truth, without the bias of bought-influence; they will do so, at virtually no cost to the American taxpayer.
The AMA’s $530 million dollars of assets have worked against both patients and physicians–their economic success has been at the expense of our national health as a whole. They never understood that to fix the American healthcare delivery system one has to work from the inside out. Since the AMA has not been on the ‘inside’ of medical practices in this country for well over a decade, they were never in a position to fix anything anyway.
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Bill Gunderson 
