AMA comes out against the public plan.
Yuval Levin in National Review:
Yesterday the American Medical Association, the most significant of the groups the Democrats seek to keep on board, announced it would oppose any plan with a public insurance “option” component. “The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans,” the AMA said. The idea of compelling doctors who take Medicare funds to participate in the new public plan is especially onerous, the organization argued, and it even took it upon itself to remind Congress of its fiscal responsibilities (someone has to), writing in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that driving private insurers out of business would create a flood of refugees into the public plan, and “the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.” Quite right.
On the merits, this shouldn’t tell you very much. The AMA represents the interests of medical doctors and, of course, medical doctors don’t really have a big interest in making health care more efficient. After all, what looks like inefficiency to health care wonks looks like “income” to doctors. Defense contractors don’t like procurement reform, and when school systems try to reform their labor practices to better reward quality teaching, teacher’s unions tend to oppose it. Such is life. Incumbent stakeholders don’t like change, but when you have an inefficient system—like health care in the United States—it’s often very helpful to push change that incumbent stakeholders don’t like.
Dr. Chris McCoy at HuffPo, quitting the AMA
Nate Silver on the AMA giving more to the GOP.
