DJP Update 6-12-2012 “AMA pulls premium support debate” – This is shocking! AMA, tell me reporter is incorrect.
This is the type of activity that causes AMA membership to drop and drop. And it continues to drop. The pulling of the “premium support” report that I highlighted in last night’s DJP Update 6-11-2012 posted at www.DJPupdate.com and said would be an important item of debate at this AMA Annual Meeting, “Report 2 of Council On Medical Service – Transitioning Medicare to a Premium Support Program” is shocking. What justification is there for that? Full debate has been a hallmark of AMA House of Delegates. And defined contribution and individual ownership of health policies have been long-standing AMA policy in health system reform. Former presidents Dr. Johnson, Dr. Plested, and myself have written Op-Eds about this, including the option for Medicare. Are we to have the world think AMA does not focus on what is best for the patient-physician relationship but instead genuflects to politicians. Time to get off bended knee. Time to cut the chains that bind physicians with price-fixing and coercion. We are Americans, not serfs.
A sad day.
Political Pro article today
AMA pulls premium support debate
By Kyle Cheney
6/12/12 12:15 PM EDT
The American Medical Association has called off what was likely to become a controversial debate next week on a resolution that would have thrown the group’s support behind a version of Medicare premium support, an AMA official said Tuesday.
A resolution for next week’s annual conference in Chicago had been put forth by the AMA’s Council on Medical Service. Although the resolution did not specifically cite the premium support plan authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, it did outline a similar concept. The AMA version would have had premium support co-exist with traditional Medicare.
At least one counterproposal had been drafted.
In an 11-page report issued earlier this month and obtained by POLITICO, the council described an “urgent need for change” in Medicare, given the spending trajectory. “Premium support is a form of ‘defined contribution,’ which offers a more predictable and sustainable way for the federal government to continue providing assistance to Medicare beneficiaries,” it said.
Robert Hertzka, an AMA delegate from California and one of the 12 doctors on the council, said in a recent interview, while the measure was still on the agenda, “If you give doctors a choice between a government fee schedule and private plans, we have always chosen fighting it out in the marketplace,” he said.
The vote carried significant political risk. While it might have mended fences with Republicans miffed over the AMA’s potent support for the Affordable Care Act, it would antagonize Democrats. And the AMA has a lot at stake, both with the perennial fights over the Medicare SGR physician pay formula as well as the larger national debate about entitlements and health spending.
Canceling the vote prevents a collision with critics who question whether premium support proposals have been detailed enough to ensure protection for low-income and vulnerable Americans. The Iowa and Minnesota delegations to the AMA had introduced a resolution that questions premium support plans because they “lack many specific details and are not well understood.”
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Stay well.
Donald
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