AMA luvs obAMA (maybe)

The President would have made a great gigolo. He wowed a group of aging professional dowagers who came prepared initially to resist his seductive rhetoric but soon not only accepted it but displayed a passion that their august bodies had not experienced in decades.
The American Medical Association known for valuing pence above passion accepted his promises. In the fashion of the best Chicago hustler he promised everything but delivered nothing.
He promised them freedom to practice their profession and pay them a fair wage for their efforts. Never was the wage nor the efforts needed to earn that wage disclosed. They were assured that if they electronically displayed their professional skills so that these skills could be compared with their peers that their cyber electronic confessions could earn them further financial absolutions and prevent them from ever sinning again.
He even resurrected the memory of a fellow but competitive political hustler (Newt) to assure them of the sincerity of his promises.
He did not assure them of protection from the legal beagles who preyed on them when they erred, explaining that fair trade practices allowed for unreasonable and extraordinary damages to be extracted to promote free trade.
But was he appealing to a majority of practicing physicians?
"Twenty-five years ago, AMA represented a substantial percentage of American physicians. Today, only 25 percent of active, practicing physicians belong to AMA. Previously, when AMA lobbyists and leadership advocated for physicians, they could claim they represented all American physicians. Today this is not the case.
During the past 25 years, the changes ......have affected AMA as well. With more federal and state governmental hassles, increased paperwork, increased work for less pay and the continued demeaning of American physicians, today's physicians have come to believe that some of their problems have been created by a weak AMA that is not looking out for their interests. As a result, more and more physicians sought solutions to their problems through their specialty societies and/or their local, state and county medical associations.
AMA was slow to respond to many of these changes because they had been firmly committed to maintaining geographic state medical associations, without acknowledging the significant potential input of specialty societies, other practice arrangements and changing physician demographics. Physicians saw few benefits in belonging to AMA, and membership began falling." .
This free fall persists and few of my acquaintances find that membership in the AMA is of benefit to them financially, professonally or intellectually.
A trade association which had earlier criticized a public health insurance mandate promised to accept it with the ills it can bring as long as the price was right.
Healthcare is too important a public need that it be bartered by any street corner professional who seek only their profit and not their customers needs. The President would do well to protect the consumer from them.