The American Medical Association (AMA) is one of the nation’s top 10 lobbying organizations. It spends tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis in order to accomplish advocacy goals that many physicians, regardless of their state or specialty background, typically agree with (i.e., scope of practice and payment). ASA appropriately celebrated the repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula for Medicare reimbursement in 2015. The SGR repeal had been one of the AMAs top three legislative priorities over the past decade, and thus AMA had been fighting this for years. The association alone spent nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2015 in order to ensure the SGR was finally defeated.1 I would cite these AMA efforts as the most influential, physician-led effort contributing to the demise of the SGR. This is important, and many AMA critics frequently overlook this.
What I find most fascinating...