That's why you should sign up for the lobby days at the hill organized by all your professional organizations. Go attend local town halls and see who shows up. If you get shouted down, so be it. They're wearing airpods like everyone else.
I want to echo this as well. Folks don't understand how critical lobbying is in the US.
When I was a med student, almost all of us were part of the AMA. Mostly because it was really cheap (maybe free?) and they gave free swag.
Many attendings complained about the AMA being too focused on social justice issues. I think the AMA focused on it to get students/residents to sign up, but they weren't doing a good job of explaining to private practice attendings what they were doing for them.
Regardless of how any of us feel about the AMA's stance on some issues, they're also the only large national lobbying force we have as physicians. So if constant Medicare reimbursement cut threats, lack of indexing reimbursement to inflation, patient access to care, GME funding, etc., bother you, the only realistic way most of us have to make any sort of difference is to support our national lobbying groups. This is largely the AMA, with our specialty groups being a long distant second (they have very little power compared to the AMA).
Support your state medical association as well--ours does quite a bit for us in CA.
Sadly, as self-employed docs/physician-owned practices wither away more and more, the AMA and our state medical associations will lose members and thus power, likely resulting in yet more of us leaving such practices (despite patients get better care from independent physicians).
So stem the tide. Join the AMA, your state medical association, and your national specialty association. Yes they're all expensive, but it's worth it for our professional autonomy, patient care, and our bottom line.
We've already given up so much bargaining power at the table. We're one of the most respected professions in the country (look up the latest Gallup polls), but we're trading it in. Patients now usually feel more local to their corporate healthcare brand than their primary doc for said healthcare corporation. If we want to drive the conversation around healthcare in the country and be the most respected voice, we have a lot more clout speaking as a professional organization representing physicians who have taken the Hippocratic oath (patients really do respect that) compared to a nameless corporation that cares more about the bottom line.
arstechnica.com
Can’t wait to take out private loans and drown in more debt.
