The Ways and Means Republicans forwarded Hal Sherz's Wall Street Journal article, according to which the health care law includes a provision facilitating large payments to the American Medical Association from now on. In return, the AMA has supported Obama's moronic health reform. Here is what Sherz says:
"It is essential to understand the primary reason the AMA stands alongside President Obama on health-care reform. The organization wants to protect a monopoly that the federal government has created for it—a medical coding system administered by the AMA that every health-care professional and hospital must use if they wish to get paid for the services they provide. This monopoly generates income of $70 million to $100 million annually for the AMA. That makes the AMA less an association looking out for doctors and more a special-interest group beholden to Congress and the White House."
One thinks of the creation of monopolies for privileged businesses as a Republican pattern. But the Democrats seem to excel the GOP in every branch of corruption, inlcuding subsidies to special business interests.
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The Wall Street Journal column you cite is ludicrous, but even it doesn't suggest that there's a provision in the new health reform law that would facilitate large payments to the AMA. The fact is that the AMA has maintained the CPT coding system for 43 years , and it has nothing to do with the health reform debate. For more than four decades, CPT coding has served as the gold standard for medical coding in this country, providing physicians and third parties with a common language to effectively and consistently describe medical, surgical, and diagnostic services. The AMA has been a professional organization for physicians for 163 years, we remain committed to working on the behalf of physicians and the patients under their care.
In 1983, the Reagan Administration adopted the AMA codes for reporting physician services in Medicare. Adopting AMA medical codes has proven to be an excellent value for America’s taxpayers, who don’t pay a dime to use the codes in the Medicare and Medicaid systems.
Wild charges and misiformation regarding the AMA medical codes were first generated in 2001 by the GOP and insurers following the AMA’s support of a patient’s bill of rights. Since then, the claims have been discounted as political payback against the AMA. Nine years later the political retribution contines, but this time the GOP and insurers are pushing the misinformation through front groups disguised as consumer advocates.
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