Get The Rope, Pitchforks And Torches

This is the sort of article that ought to get you digging around in the garage for what the American people seem to forget they have: Pitchforks, torches and rope.
There is one simple and easily actionable approach that each of us could take to try to wrest control over health policy decisions away from the lobbyists who now control it with little effective counterbalance and put it back in the hands of our patients, who should be powerful shapers of such decision making.
This is a short excerpt from an article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) on a conversation they urge doctors to have with you. The gist of it? Obamacare and forced cost-shifting in general is something you should demand more of from politicians.
Now let me note something for the record: The AMA, which of course is the last three words of the title of that journal, has just 15% of practicing physicians as members today. This was 75% in the 1950s. Yet the “association” has never had it better when it comes to its finances.
How is this possible?
The AMA makes most of its money today on the forced subscription to the ICD and CPT codebook sales that both change every year and become more complex. The association has created for itself a monopoly with the force of law in that government-funded health care providers must use it, and yet they’re a privateorganization.

This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-12-14.