In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece published today, Hal Scherz, MD the president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare exposed the American Medical Association’
A recent statement from the AMA conveyed in part that “physicians might reflect on how to properly balance their obligations as members of the medical profession with their rights as individual citizens who will be affected by reform”. Many doctors interpreted this as an attempt to keep doctors from sharing their opinions about health-care reform with their patients.
“The AMA is putting the doctors of America on notice. A major cheerleader for ObamaCare, the organization is now trying to silence doctors who oppose it. It is time the American people understood what the AMA is really all about” stated Dr. Scherz. “The AMA was not only a major supporter of ObamaCare but also an accomplice in its passage. Without the support of the AMA it is quite possible that the health-care reform initiative would have failed. So why the effort to silence other doctors? The AMA is not only worried about protecting this misguided legislation, it is worried about protecting itself”.
Dr. Scherz explained the reasoning why the AMA stood alongside President Obama on health-care reform by writing today in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The organization wants to protect a monopoly that the federal government has created for it—a medical coding system administered by the AMA that every health-care professional and hospital must use if they wish to get paid for the services they provide. This monopoly generates income of $70 million to $100 million annually for the AMA. That makes the AMA less a group looking out for doctors and more a special-interest group beholden to Congress and the White House.”
Most people assume that the AMA represents most doctors however, less than 20 percent of all physicians in the United States belong to the organization.
“In the weeks since passage of this 2,700 page bill, more and more of its policy land-mines have exploded, including rising insurance premiums and admissions of inevitable rationing. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of physicians have expressed alarm over the impact that the legislation will have on their patients. This growing opposition makes the actions of the AMA, which represents only 17% of the doctors in the U.S., look very bad” Dr. Scherz explained.
The op-ed is available at:
http://online.wsj.com/
Docs4PatientCare is a 501(c) 6 organization of concerned physicians committed to the establishment of a health care system that preserves the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, promotes quality of care, supports affordable access to all Americans, and protects patients' personal health care decisions. Docs4PatientCare urges patients and physicians to get involved in order to preserve the good qualities of our healthcare system, address the problems, while preventing its bureaucratic destruction.
Please visit http://www.docs4patientcare.org
For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Scherz, please contact Felicia Horton of Docs4PatientCare at (303) 726-9731 or feliciah04@comcast.net
