The AMA Gets it Right by Defending Evidence-Based Medicine and Patient, Physician Autonomy

Gun control advocates like to accuse legislators of being “afraid of the NRA,” implying that reason and principle have nothing to do with their legislative decisions. In the same way, Jackie Kucinich, in a column in The Daily Beast, suggests that the failure of Congress to pass CARA 2.0 (Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act) is due primarily to the lobbying clout of the American Medical Association, pointing to its status as the “seventh highest lobbying spender in 2017.”  The article quotes opioid reform advocate Gary Mendell as saying “the AMA will resist anything that regulates healthcare”—an interesting opinion about an organization that supported passage of the Affordable Care Act, one of the deepest regulatory intrusions into American health care in half a century. Over the years, the AMA’s seeming reluctance to mount a principled defense of patient autonomy and freedom of choice in healthcare—perhaps fearing it may jeopardize the car tel it lobbied so hard to establish over the past century and a half—has led to an exodus of many disillusioned members. It is estimated that less than 17 percent of the country’s doctors belong to the special interest group today.But on this one, the AMA gets it right. It opposes the “one-size-fits-all” imposition of the 2016 opioid prescribing guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; guidelines that many noted addiction medicine specialists have criticized as not-eviden...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs