Our Dead American Medical Association
Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2012 5:41 pm
Dr. Annis predicted the top-down government controls; the rules and regulations; the giant bureaucracy, and even the fiscal insolvency that looms large today. But the train left the station in 1965 with the passage of Medicare, and in 1983, the AMA jumped on board - for money and the promise of control.
The government was looking for a way to standardize medical billing for Medicare, and the AMA had just the thing. We call it Current Procedural Terminology. The AMA owns it, and the organization signed an exclusive agreement with the government in 1983 that made it the coding system for all Medicare billing.
Gradually, the terminology became the standard for all medical billing - private insurance and government plans. The AMA has a government-granted monopoly, and it enjoys a lucrative stream of income as a result.
It is estimated that the AMA takes in between $50 million and $80 million per year from licensing fees and the sale of coding books, materials and other related products. This income dwarfs the amount generated from dues-paying physician members. See the problem? The AMA is a corporation in the business of selling and protecting its Current Procedural Terminology income stream, not its doctor members. The emperor truly has no clothes, and America’s working physicians have no effective representation to counter the massive power of the federal government and the new Affordable Care Law, which will control the entire health care economy by 2014.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... sociation/
The government was looking for a way to standardize medical billing for Medicare, and the AMA had just the thing. We call it Current Procedural Terminology. The AMA owns it, and the organization signed an exclusive agreement with the government in 1983 that made it the coding system for all Medicare billing.
Gradually, the terminology became the standard for all medical billing - private insurance and government plans. The AMA has a government-granted monopoly, and it enjoys a lucrative stream of income as a result.
It is estimated that the AMA takes in between $50 million and $80 million per year from licensing fees and the sale of coding books, materials and other related products. This income dwarfs the amount generated from dues-paying physician members. See the problem? The AMA is a corporation in the business of selling and protecting its Current Procedural Terminology income stream, not its doctor members. The emperor truly has no clothes, and America’s working physicians have no effective representation to counter the massive power of the federal government and the new Affordable Care Law, which will control the entire health care economy by 2014.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... sociation/