The AMA’s Ties to For-Profit Health Care
I was familiar with the AMA’s general history of root-and-branch opposition to health care reform over the years. It’s no surprise, after all, that a group which once warned that Medicare would lead to totalitarianism thinks that creating a public health insurance option for non-seniors will also result in apocalypse.
What I hadn’t known until I read my colleague Lee Fang’s excellent backgrounder “A Symbiotic Relationship – The AMA And The For-Profit Health Lobby” published yesterday on the Wonk Room was the real background behind some of this. The AMA’s self-presentation is as a membership organization of doctors. But many doctors, of course, are not AMA members, and the group “inflates its numbers by giving reduced membership fees to medical school students and retirees, who make up about half of the dues payers.” More to the point, over the course of at least a century the AMA has found that it can’t rely on membership dues to generate the kind of revenue that the AMA leadership is looking for. Instead, they’ve turned to corporate sponsorship—businesses with money to make by casting a veneer of medical respectability around their pursuit of profit find a relationship with the AMA to be useful.
Lee offers this charming anecdote about the quality of the public health advice that follows from this practice:
Through the 1930s to 1950s during the tenure of AMA President Morris Fishbein, the tobacco industry leaned on the AMA to substantiate its dubious health claims. Beginning in 1933, JAMA published tobacco advertisements, stating that it had done so only “after careful consideration of the extent to which cigarettes were used by physicians in practice.” The tobacco industry became the AMA’s largest advertiser, and its implicit endorsement of tobacco products allowed companies like Camel to proclaim slogans such as, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”
These days, fortunately, the AMA isn’t on the hook to tobacco companies for its money and it’s not into anything as deadly as touting the health benefits of cigarettes. What they are on the hook for, however, is the pharmaceutical lobby which provides at least 20 percent of the AMA’s budget. And PhRMA is in the midst of a multimillion dollar advocacy campaign against many progressive health reform ideas.
12 Responses to “The AMA’s Ties to For-Profit Health Care”
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June 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Like the AMA, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad are beholden to for-profit health care.
Mac came out yesterday for the co-op idea, offered by Conrad & the corrupt doctor lobby.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Just as the AMA has for-profit health care conflicts, so do most of the Obama reformers. Beware the bait & switch.
Since words have no meaning anymore, it’s not much of a stretch for
“public = co-op”
“co-op = nonprofit shell contracting with for-profit insurance company or for-profit licensing nonprofit franchise (like WellPoint)”
Trust the AMA, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad as far as you can throw them.
White House Health Czar Nancy0Ann DeParle has experience converting nonprofit community hospitals into for-profit facilities.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Thanks for the bit of history. I’m no fan of the AMA, but your report is really no more relevant than the Republicans’ frequent reminders about the history of racism in the Democratic party. It’s been many decades since the Dixiecrats left the Democratic party or physicians endorsed smoking.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
“first, do no harm”
June 12th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Am I completely mis-remembering, or didn’t the AMA come out in favor of Clinton’s doomed health care plan back in 1993?
June 12th, 2009 at 11:07 am
The AMA does not represent most US physicians. Fewer than 30% of physicians in the US are AMA members. The AMA derives a significant portion of its income from selling prescription data to pharmaceutical companies. The drug makers use this data to target their marketing efforts to physicians.
These kind of bad policy decisions are the reason I cancelled my AMA membership years ago.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Meanwhile, in the past eight years, the FDA expenditure limits on Direct Advertising to Consumers (DTC) have increased from 700 million to 4.2 billion.
So instead of pharma incentivizing doctors to push drugs on their patients, they get the patients themselves to demand the drugs they see on T.V. Thanks to government regulations banning blatant bribes (one case in the 80s cited a doctor who received a small yacht from a pharma rep in exchange for writing prescriptions), the pharma companies have now found new ways to leverage and exploit us all.
Until consumers demand more rights—and pressure elected government officials—none of this will change.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Lets not forget the AMA’s heartwarming legacy of racism as well. They have been closely intertwined with many nefarious social ills.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Excellent post.
We have so many Industrial Complexes in this country it is hard to keep track.
We should just put them all in one giant umbrella thingy and say our Nation is the grips of the Hypocrisy Industrial Complex.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Once came across a back cover ad for Camels from a 20’s(?) sports magazine. Tag line delivered by an Olympic equestrian holding a(n obviously retouched cigarette) Camel: “…and Camels don’t cut your wind.”
Which implies that people already knew smoking cut down on lung power.
And it only took another 4 decades to get serious about the health consequences. And another 4 decades to start to control it.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Dr. Mark Oswood is correct in that only 30% of U.S doctors are members of the AMA and of that 30% almost half of them are retired. The public, the media and our public officials lump all physicians as being the AMA which, sadly, makes all other doctors guilty by association of a failure in doing their hippocratic oath to,’first, do no harm.’
June 18th, 2009 at 11:02 am
[...] doctors in country belong to it. And a good percentage (up to half of members according to one report) of those include residents and medical students, who get big discounts on membership and a free [...]