Good morning blogger buds! Many of you may have heard the recent commotion between the AMA (American Medical Association) and Sermo, a community based organization made up of about 110,000 US doctors. I want to enlighten each of you........not all doctors are members of the AMA. Why? Because it has been felt that the AMA does not represent doctors as it pledges to do so. Many doctors feel the goal of the AMA today is to generate large amounts of money for itself (employees). If the profits made by the AMA were used for the benefit of physicians, there would be no issue. However, if the primary goal is to support a bloated beaurocracy, there is no motivation from the AMA administration to change the system. It would be to their benefit to preserve the system or better yet to expand it. For this reason, the AMA is supporting Obama's Healthcare Reform.

One last important point to for the public to realize: If AMA claims to represent practicing American physicians to the government and the public, exactly how many practicing physicians belong to the organization? The AMA has consistently refused to provide a breakdown of their membership numbers. Their claim of 250,000 members does not compute with the reality of their own data. Their most recent financial statement shows income of $43.9 million from membership dues. Medical students, interns, residents and fellows receive an average reduced membership rate of $35 per year and assuming half of the 200,000 physicians in these categories are members, this leaves about $40 million in dues from other, presumably practicing physicians. Divide this number by the $420 annual dues for practicing physicians and the actual membership is about 95,000. There are approximately 1.1 million practicing physicians in the US so 95,000 AMA members would represent about 9% of US physicians.

Would the real AMA please stand up?