The AMA has offered support for the House health care reform legislation in a letter to Charles Rangel.
So, is the AMAs support for reform consistent with lowering costs when those savings of necessity must come in large part from doctor’s pockets?
The AMA fought HMOs because they feared HMOs would take patients and lower costs. Physicians then started their own HMOs and tried to run them as business as usual without fundamental change in health care delivery thereby hastening the HMOs demise.
If the AMA is for reform there isn’t any.
In the reports that I have read, it appears that the sole reason the AMA has wholly endorsed the House bill is that they do away with the SGR formula and replace it with a strictly inflation escalator. So instead of the 21.5% decrease that the SGR formula requires at the end of 2009, physicians would receive an increase equal to inflation. No longer would utilization be part of the formula. http://www.ilovebenefits.wordpress.com
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