In his piece, Dr. Armstrong highlights a couple of facts that aren't widely known by the general American public:
1) The AMA now represents only 15% of American physicians.Hence, the AMA is far more beholden to the federal government than to physicians. Is it any surprise that the AMA decided to back ObamaCare despite deep opposition from regular practicing physicians?
2) They make most of their money from a government-granted monopoly on medical coding, rather than from physician membership dues.
And because the public perception is that the AMA "is the voice of American doctors", most people wrongly concluded that there was of a "consensus" of US physicians in favor of ObamaCare when that was not the case at all.
Fortunately, more US physicians are joining other groups that do genuinely represent their interests and their patients' interests, such as Docs4PatientCare.
(Read the full text of "Our Dead American Medical Association".)
Finally, one commenter made the following astute observation:
Most doctors don't dare practice medicine any more.This is the future of American medicine unless ObamaCare is repealed and we adopt genuine free-market health care reforms.
They must simply fit their patients into templates designed by actuaries and prescribe negotiated, unimaginative, and often dated protocols handed down from the ivory tower regardless of documented dismal success rates. Straitjacketed by the constant threat of malpractice the MD now merely represents a certificate of applied medicine and board certified means guaranteed not to stray from Conn's Current Therapy.
They don't have a license to practice medicine, they have a permit to follow a flow chart. It sickens me.
