American Medical Association - Definition and Overview

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest association of medical doctors in the United States. Its purpose is to advance the interests of physicians, to promote better public health, to lobby for medical legislation, and to raise money for medical education. The AMA also publishes the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a prestigious medical journal. It also runs the SAVE program, which stands for Stop America's Violence Everywhere.

Political positions

The AMA has traditionally opposed socialized medicine. Its vehement campaign against Medicare in the 1950s and 1960s included the Operation Coffee Cup supported by Ronald Reagan. In recent years it has however campaigned to expand Medicare payments. The association has also supported medical malpractice reform to limit damage awards and stronger patient's rights legislation.

Criticisms

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman (1979) argues the AMA controls the supply of physicians (in order to raise physicians' wages) through State government licensure of physicians and schools. Only physicians are generally regarded as qualified enough to judge potential physicians, so State licensing boards are primarily composed entirely of physicians, who are generally members of the AMA.

AMA created its Council on Medical Education in 1904 with the goal of shutting down more than half of all medical schools in existence (Steinreich). Since the AMA's creation of the Council a century ago, the U.S. population has increased in size by 284%, yet the number of medical schools has declined by 26%. In terms of admissions, the peak year for applicants at U.S. schools was 1996, where roughly 64% of applications were rejected. The last six years the University of Alabama (hardly a beacon of prestige in the medical discipline) has averaged about an 87% rejection rate (Steinreich).

AMA would likely argue that there's nothing necessarily wrong with very high rejection rates. This is correct, except for the fact that these rates are being applied to pools of candidates who are cream-of-the-crop in quality and have put themselves through a very costly admissions process (Steinreich).

External links

• AMA home page (http://www.ama-assn.org/)
• AMA Political Contributions (Opensecrets.org) (http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D000000068&Name=American+Medical+Assn)
• Medical Control, Medical Corruption (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/medical.html)

References

• Friedman, Milton & Rose (1979). Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-133481-1.
• Steinrich, Dale (2004). 100 Years of Medical Robbery. Ludwig von Mises Institute. [1] (http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1547&id=69)