A letter responding to Regina Herzlinger’s scathing op-ed yesterday.
Related posts:
- We should not care about Regina Benjamin’s weight
- CNN responds to Michael Moore
- The Angry Pharmacist responds to his critics
- Sermo responds to privacy concerns
- Karl Rove responds to Hillary’s health plan
- Partners Healthcare responds to the payment disparity uproar
- ER boarding
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 5 comments }
After reviewing both the Op Ed and the AMA response, I can only conclude that they are both right. The AMA, impotent in the fight against the Government and the Managed Care Industry, now takes on Wal-Mart. Anyone want to bet who the winner will be?
Unfortunately, the chairman-writing response- equates lip service to reality. Akin to obese patients telling you how hard they’re trying to lose weight, lip-listing steps they’re “doing” even…reality is, they just keep gaining more weight! When will these people realize that thinking and ruminating about it, does not make it become real??? Since when did the AMA stop losing its battles for doctors it claims to represent? Really, they’re not even good at collecting ‘half-year’ dues…who are they kidding…the doctors won’t figure out the simple math? Why pay for the perks of the useless clerks in Chicago and DC? What have they done for any real doctor lately?
One thing that the drug store clinic idea shows is that there is no longer the slightest shred of shame or social penalty associated with hypocrisy. The phamacy industry has waged a 150 year war on physician office dispensing on the grounds that it presents a conflict of interest–even though in all but unusual situations it is scarcely any profit to the physician that is a meaningful percentage of his fee-based income. Now pharmacies are jumping into providing medical care which presents a HUGE conflict of interest–especially when they have midlevel practioners as employees. Anyone who doesn’t thing they are going to be expected to prescribe in such a fashion as to optimize drug store profits is a dufus–and as semi-professional employees they are going to have no independence and are going to be expected to take orders like any other employee.
“Why pay for the perks of the useless clerks in Chicago and DC? What have they done for any real doctor lately?”
Amen, Anon 12:33.
The AMA has been purposely deaf, dumb and blind on any number of issues.
If more members would treat “the society” as it has treated members (and potential members), and leave it high & dry, we’d all save some money and probably be better off.
As they say in the south, the mighty American Medical Association (in all of its various forms) is about as useful to ordinary physicians as tits on a boar hog.
young physicians are especially unlikely to benefit from AMA membership. Dues are outrageous, publications are largely filled with pharma ads & social garbage rather than medicine, and AMA leaders are rarely connected to the actual issues facing practicing doctors.
This is true of state medical societies also.
I recently received an email asking for dues (i DID join the ACP but will not renew), and I responded “are due discounted for primary care docs, like insurance reimbursements?”
The response was a humorless mechanical “no, dues are the same for everyone at your stage of career, blah blah blah”. So even their dues-collecting monkeys can’t be bothered to listen to those they claim to represent.
They need to just be disbanded, and I foresee that in the next 20yrs as this generation of doctors sees through this bs, that is what will happen.
Comments on this entry are closed.