American Medical Association
October 2008
Q: What are the basic principles of the AMA proposal?
A: The American Medical Association (AMA) proposes that individuals and families receive financial assistance to purchase a health plan of their choice, with more generous assistance to those with lower incomes. The financial assistance could take the form of tax credits or vouchers and must be earmarked for health insurance coverage. Health insurance market regulations should be reformed to establish fair “rules of the game” that protect vulnerable individuals, without unduly driving up premiums for the rest of the population.
Q: How is the AMA proposal different or better than a single-payer system?
A: Both the AMA and the single-payer approaches emphasize the same goal of universal coverage, but they differ on how to implement it.
The AMA does not believe that full government control is a workable model for the United States. Single-payer systems are plagued with an undersupply of medical personnel, long waiting periods and a lack of patient choice. Alternatively, the AMA proposal seeks to enhance patient choice and encourage patients to be conscious of health insurance costs, while also maintaining innovation in the private sector.
AMA position on single payer - PNHP’s official Blog
The AMA is aggressively involved in advocacy efforts related to the most vital issues in medicine today, including medical liability reform, Medicare physician payment reform, expanding coverage for the uninsured and increasing access to care, improving the public health, managed care reform, and others.
Medicare physician payment reform and regulatory relief
As the leading force in Washington for Medicare reform, the AMA will be relentless in the battle to replace the flawed Medicare physician payment formula.
Managed care reform
The AMA will continue to combat third-party interference with the physician-patient relationship, including advancing antitrust reform, eliminating unnecessary hassles and unfair payment practices; and fighting for reimbursement decisions that are based on optimal patient care, not economics
The enhanced premium assistance provisions would improve SCHIP’s ability to have a coordinated partnership role with existing private sector health insurance coverage and ease budgetary pressures on the SCHIP program in the process.
The AMA is pleased to see Congress take early action on this important issue, especially during these challenging economic times. With SCHIP reauthorized, we look forward to working with Congress on more comprehensive health system reform issues in a bipartisan fashion to expand coverage for the uninsured and expand choice of health plans for all Americans.
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/399/schip-chipra-pelosi-letter.pdf
The point of all that was to show that posting a poll from reuters of Doctors and then using that poll as an indicator for all Doctors is a false argument. Take for example the poll often stated that 79% of Americans support a "govt. option" well what they fail to tell you in that poll is that the data set consisted of 800 people of which 80% voted for Barack Obama, so what do you think the result of the poll would be? The AMA has stated clearly that it believes like I do that the healthcare reforms are needed and as many others do. They have also stated that a single payer of Govt. run insurance program like Medicare is NOT the best way to accomplish this as you can see, and it's a position I happen to agree with.
