--- In [email protected], Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > shempmcgurk wrote: > > --- In [email protected], Bhairitu <noozguru@> wrote: > > > >> > >> The AMA is not a government agency. > >> > > > > > > > > Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they were. > > > > But it is true, I believe, that much of their mandate IS as a result > > of federal law. > > > Hardly. The AMA lobbies for these policies. The government does not > come up with. The AMA mainly consists of a bunch of doctors who got > their because daddy was a doctor and made sure that sonny or daughter > got through medical not from skill but from help from daddy's > connections just so they can have an easy life golfing and occasionally > looking at a patient's blood panel and sticking their finger up the > patients ass. Doctors who are truly interested in practicing medicine > often find the AMA's exploits appalling.
The following is from a much longer article found at http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1749 but I think you'll find here that the AMA has quite a legislated mandate (here they talk about legislated mandates by states; I believe there is also a federal mandate as well): Medical Regulation and the AMA Besides paying some of the highest prices for health care, we have the dubious distinction of having the most heavily regulated healthcare system in the world. In no other country on earth are doctors and hospitals subjected to as many oversight and enforcement agencies, bureaus and commissions. Rules, regulations, and laws are duplicated, redundant, multiplied, magnified, and contradictory. Laws and regulations covering doctors and hospitals plus all the other parts of our healthcare system now account for over half of all the words, sentences, and paragraphs in our entire body of law. If regulations could make a healthcare system work better, ours would surely be perfect. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Even those who believe that only government regulation can assure quality health care should face this fact. More laws and regulations are not going to fix our system. If we are truly concerned about the high cost of health care, if we really desire greater safety and higher quality, then we must undertake a dispassionate analysis of the current mess. If we wish to begin effective treatment of our healthcare system, we must first make an accurate diagnosis. To make the correct diagnosis in a complicated medical case it is often helpful to have patients recount their first encounter with their symptoms. So it is with understanding the conundrum we call our healthcare system. We have to go very far back to the first meeting of what would become the American Medical Association. This meeting was held in New York City in 1846. Twenty-nine allopathic doctors (MDs) attended the meeting. They wanted to establish a monopoly over health care in the United States for those doctors that practiced higher quality medicine, such as themselves. They felt there were too many different kinds of doctors practicing too many questionable forms of medicine. They wanted only doctors that conformed to their brand of medicine to be allowed to practice. They wished to set up their association as a medical elite and obtain a government-enforced monopoly over health care in the United States. The following year the AMA was officially launched. Members' efforts were at first slow to yield results. One of their first successes was in getting the exclusive right to positions in the federal government. Then, around 1870, the AMA began to find success at setting up medical boards in each state. The rationale behind these medical boards was twofold. First, it was assumed that only doctors knew enough about medicine to be able to determine whether a physician was competent. And second, it was felt that doctors accused of misconduct should not be subjected to the public humiliation of an open trial. Typically the AMA would team up with key lawmakers in a state and lobby for legislation to "protect public safety." The idea was that incompetent and unscrupulous doctors were doing great harm to healthcare consumers. There was no proof of this, but it was their claim. A state consumer protection agency staffed by AMA members was promoted. That is, a state board made up of AMA members would examine applicants who wanted to practice medicine and only license those who were, according to them, competent and morally fit. So each state in turn passed a Medical Practice Act which created a board of medical examiners with police powers to enforce their decisions. It was critical to the AMA's long-range plans that states establish these medical boards.
