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AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE - HOW THE AMA MISSED THE MALPRACTICE BOAT By Siding with Trial Lawyers, Dcotor's Association Squanders its Clout By Kathy Read, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Reported in Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10-01-02, P. 9B Only a few decades ago, the American Medical Association bestrode the nation's health-care system like a mighty colossus; today it is crumbling in the desert like Shelley's Ozymandias - a victim of self-inflicted wounds. As recently as 1972, 75 percent of American doctors belonged to the AMA. It's ironfisted cloud dominated Capitol Hill to such an extent that bills initially drafted by AMA lawyers often became law with few, if any, substantive changes. But the venerable lobbying organization has fallen on hard times. Now it represents only 29 percent of the nation's 1 million physicians. And despite the fact that it spends more on lobbying than any other interest group - nearly $84 million over the past five years - its relationship with a majority in Congress appears to border on utter disrepair. Worse, many in its dwindling membership of 290,000 are contemplating leaving the 155-year-old organization - increasingly disenchanted with its politicized leadership and disgruntled with the narrow ideological range of its policy agenda. Once a bastion of the quiet kind of Midwestern conservatism that attracted moderate Republicans and Democrats alike, the AMA now, more often than not, is perceived as siding with the extreme left-wing of the Democratic Party and its principal bankrollers - the nation's wealthiest personal injury lawyers. "At a time when doctors around the country are besieged with often frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits and sky-rocketing insurance premiums, who would have thought the AMA would be making common cause with the trial lawyers?" asked a suburban Washington heart specialist, who requested anonymity. "This is crazy," he added. "I'm paying the AMA so they can help a bunch of trial lawyers hit me up for exorbitant damage awards in merit-less lawsuits?" Roger F. Mecum, executive vice president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, notes that doctors in his hard-hit state are moving to other areas of the country simply because they cannot afford the soaring insurance rates that such lawsuits have triggered. "Spurred by soaring malpractice awards, runaway insurance rates are forcing doctors to cut back across the nation," Medum said. "They have less money to invest in new medical equipment, are forced to close smaller branch offices, and must trim office staff. The upshot is a downswing in available health care services." Similar horror stories abound in other states across the United States, with Texas, Nevada, Mississippi, Ohio, New York, Washington and Oregon among the hardest-hit. In many states, physicians now pay annual premiums of $100,000 and more for malpractice insurance. Because personal injury lawyers are responsible for much of the malaise in America's system of health-care delivery, many physicians are disturbed that the AMA all but ignored the malpractice crisis until a few months ago. While not even listing the malpractice crises as a major issue on its Web site, the AMA mounted a huge lobbying campaign on behalf of a patients' bill of rights that would allow lawyers to sue health care providers on behalf of patients and, in some cases, doctors as well. The AMA's sudden infatuation with litigation does not end there, however. The organization also has joined a handful of personal injury lawyers pressing a class-action lawsuit in Miami against the nation's eight largest health insurers, a development that further irritates many doctors - and rightly so. Nine of every 10 doctors have at least one contract with an HMO, while some have legitimate arguments about rates and procedures, few want to put their employers out of business by encouraging multimillion-dollar punitive damage awards. If a federal judge allows the Miami case to proceed to trial, health-care experts worry that it could bankrupt a number of the providers, cause dramatic increases in premiums and snatch high-paying jobs from thousands of doctors. The only real beneficiary, they say, would be the lawyers, who typically walk away with 40 to 50 percent of punitive damage awards as their contingency fees. It's doubly ironic, that the AMA, which is supposed to represent the best interests of physicians, is siding with a profession that has spent most of the past decade targeting doctors with dubious and punitive legal actions. But this is the bed for AMA has made - exposing its physicians and the future of the healthcare system in the process. Rather than lie in this mess, rank-and-file physicians should clean house. Those physicians who remain members of the AMA should seek to replace all AMA officials and board members who put the crass money-making interests of lawyers above the vital needs of the medical profession. Barring that, they should consider resigning from the AMA, and working to improve the nation's health-care system through their own specialty medical associations and local community organizations. Kathy Read is a former publisher of The Wilson Quarterly, the official journal of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Readers may write to her at P.O. Box 5925, Bethesda, MD 20824. | ||
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WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS
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