Health Care Policy Analysis derived from the Farewell remarks from AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., MD | AMA 2023 Annual Meeting
Curators: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN, Stephen J. Williams, PhD and Prof. Marcus W. Feldman
Article ID #301: Health Care Policy Analysis derived from the Farewell remarks from AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., MD | AMA 2023 Annual Meeting. Published on 6/10/23
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Date of Update: 07/03/2023
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Human Verifier: Aviva Lev-Ari & Dr. Stephen J. Williams
On June 10, 2023, I watched the video, below which represents the delivery of the Farewell remarks from AMA by the AMA President, Jack Resneck Jr., MD at the AMA 2023 Annual Meeting on 6/10/2023.
Watch the Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGEGH5IwOaE
Download PDF Transcript
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/a23-resneck-speech.pdf
Upon completion of watching this video, I concluded that I should include it as an embedded video in this article as a new Audio Podcast in our Library of 300 “Interviews with Scientific Leaders” same title of a research category in the ontology of LPBI Group’s PharmaceuticalIntelligence.com Journal.
The context for the decision made in favor of embedding the video of AMA President, Jack Resneck Jr., MD, Farewell remarks from AMA at the AMA 2023 Annual Meeting on 6/10/2023 is one of Policy Analysis of the Health Care system in the US in 2023.
Aligned with this decision was to qualify Dr. Resneck Jr, MD speech to be an equivalent to an “Interview with a Scientific Leader in the domain of Health Policy” to be included in LPBI Group’s Library of 300 audio podcast Interviews planned to be published in July 2023.
Key points made by Dr. Resneck Jr, MD in the video
>> Dangerous external attacks engulfing our profession
- anti-science aggression,
- disinformation,
- payment cuts,
- many practice burdens driving burnout
- growing number of states and courts forcing themselves into the most intimate and difficult conversations patients and physicians
The challenges facing the medical profession and delivery of care by Providers:
- A dysfunctional health care environment, and
- The climate of anti-science aggression
In his own words: Dr. Resneck Jr, MD
We need to fix what’s broken in health care, and it’s NOT the doctor.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with us that patients and judges can’t force physicians to administer substandard care.
Courts have invalidated parts of No Surprises Act rules that plainly ignored Congressional intent and put a thumb on the scale to favor insurance companies… thank you Texas Medical Association and AMA!
The 5th Circuit Court is staying- for now – an egregious ruling that would have stripped patients of the right to access preventive care service with no out-of-pocket costs, a key piece of the Affordable Care Act.
The U.S. Supreme Court is delaying attempts by a single district judge with no scientific or medical training to take mifepristone off the market nationally and upend our entire FDA drug regulatory process.
We’ve helped shift the national conversation about protecting patient data and making sure digital health and AI tools are proven BEFORE being deployed.
We’ve broadened and intensified our work to embed equity and racial justice, and to push upstream to affect structural and social drivers of health inequities.
The AMA doesn’t win every battle. But we are more resolute in our work because of the threats to our profession and our patients.
I’m still appalled by the Medicare cuts. What on earth was Congress thinking? Practices are on the brink. Our workforce is at risk. Access to care stands in the balance
- Physician burnout
One in five physicians plans to leave their practice within two years, while one in three is reducing hours.
Only 57 percent of doctors today would choose medicine again if they were just starting their careers.
two in five physicians go beyond mere daydreams of another career to wishing they had never chosen this path in the first place
And shame on political leaders, fueling fear and sowing division by making enemies of public health officials, of transgender adolescents, of physicians doing anti-racism work, and of women making personal decisions about their pregnancies.
The burnout and the moral injury are real … I’ve felt it myself. I hear this concern in the voices of medical students, residents, and even young physicians when they ask me … “Am I going to be okay?” “Have I made the right career choice?”
- Medicare payment reform for “a dilapidated Medicare payment system”
fighting for long overdue fixes to a broken Medicare payment system, and obnoxious prior auth abuses, even when policymakers have neglected the problems for decades.
We absolutely must tie future Medicare payments to inflation, and we’re readying a major national campaign to finally achieve Congressional action.
Linking physician payment to inflation is an absolute top priority, an existential must to keep practices afloat, and pillar #1 of our plan. An important step on that path was the recent introduction of a bipartisan bill to finally align the Medicare fee schedule with MEI.
key role in legislation to extend Medicare Telehealth coverage.
State after state is making progress to constrain prior authorization, and CMS issued rules to do the same in Medicare Advantage plans.
Medicaid work requirements that conflict with AMA policy were kept out of the debt ceiling bill.
- Scope of practice expansions
In partnership with states and specialties, our advocacy has helped protect patients from outrageous and broad scope expansions more than 50 times so far this year.
defending against broad scope expansions that put patients at risk, even when it requires gearing up again and again, in state after state.
When politicians force their way into our exam rooms Interfering with the sacred patient-doctor relationship is about CONTROL. : battling in state legislatures and courthouses for the very soul of our nation and our profession – to protect patients from those outside influences wanting to dictate the terms of their care … …telling them what medical treatments their physicians can provide … …what FDA-approved medicines we can prescribe…. …even what words we can use …
I loved traveling to Mississippi and witnessing their progress from startling COVID inequities to achieving one of the nation’s top vaccination rates among Black residents.
And we have been instrumental in helping create confidential wellness programs for physicians and removing outdated questions from past impairment from licensing and credentialing forms.
- Gun Violence Victims – Preventable and needless homicides and suicides continue, and the political inaction is atrocious.
But solid majorities of Americans believe in commonsense gun reforms in line with our AMA recommendations.
You wouldn’t know it from 20 state legislatures racing to criminalize abortion and rob women of access to reproductive health care… But most people in this country support our policies and the fundamental rights of patients to make their own decisions about their health.
>> AMA Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians: https://bit.ly/AMA_RecoveryPlan
>> Insurance impact on delivery of care by providers
m health insurers still bullying us with prior auth delays and denying care …
We’ve joined others in suing Cigna for shortchanging doctors and patients.
The Voice of Dr. Stephen J. Williams
The outgoing president of the AMA, Dr. Jack Resneck, gives an impassioned speech about his concerns for the present and future of medicine, his profession, and the issues which will face future physicians, and all involved in healthcare. These issues have been building up for decades now in the U.S. and his remarks hopefully will be taken more to heart by those who can enact change, instead of wafting in the ongoing partisan debates in Washington. He eventually outlines the actions which could be taken but ultimately laments the inaction of many parties involved, including business, the political class, and his own physician profession. Dr. Resneck rightly states that the AMA must carry the burden of equitable and sustainable healthcare into the future and must continue the fight in this regard. He likens this fight for equitable and sustainable medicine like a marathon, where there is no defined end, no finish tape for medical professionals except to persevere in their task.
However, there are more extraneous issues to the profession where the physician has to
get back up, shake the dust off, and keep running
He notes some of the problems occurring not in direct control of the profession are
- the constant onslaught and tiresome battle against disinformation
- large insurers
- a political class that has jeapardized the physician/patient relationship with either their action and inaction
- the financial burdens placed on the small physician practice of rising third party “inflators” like higher rents, increased drug prices, higher operating costs
These laments have been felt by many parallel professions where the standards and practice to the profession have been subjugated and hijacked by other outside interests (middle men). And when the ultimate decisions of conduct are not governed by the constituents or stakeholders of the profession but by a cadre of business people, profiteers or social engineers problems like this result. As such, Dr. Resneck sees the draconian Medicare cuts as such an onslaught. This has been voiced in an earlier posting describing how these problems have crept in the biomedicine and biotech field as well as in medical care in Can the Public Benefit Company Structure Save US Healthcare?
One must consider then, as Dr. Resneck had, is it time to reinvent the healthcare structure in this country to allow more equitable, sustainable delivery of healthcare and to stave off a potential crisis in the number of physicians staying in the profession? As such he had suggested the AMA move forward with their “revival plan” in order to force legislation to reform Medicare as well as individual regulatory reform. To date there has been some success by the AMA to this effect, but as he eluded to, these efforts have been rather piecemeal instead of an overall reform.
The Voice of Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
Gun Violence, all should not have to happen and burden the care delivery system designed to deal with chronic and acute diagnoses.
As Supervisor of a Long Term Acute Hospital in Waltham, MA in 2010:
- I became familiar with care plans of patients victims of gun violence and the life long disabilities cause by ONE gun shot to the brain or to the spine. Accidents that are preventable and needless.
I found Dr. Resneck’s address to be a call for continuation of a long term fight the AMA is involved in, with all the constituents of the Medical profession. They are very many and very powerful:
- Big Pharma,
- FDA,
- State and Federal legislators,
- HMOs,
- Health Insurers,
- For-profit, and
- not-for-profit institutions
all having interests that are private and public and often conflicting ones, chiefly are the following:
- Gun reforms made impossible by The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s supporters linking the defense to bear arms with the Constitution
- 20 state legislatures racing to criminalize abortion and rob women of access to reproductive health care…
- Drug pricing and Insurance denying coverage
- Need for redesign of the Curriculum of in Medical School to include the rapid change in technology, medical devices, knowledge base in life sciences and more
The Voice of Prof. Marcus W. Feldman
Dr Resneck’s talk has three components: two are rather pessimistic and concern Medicine as a profession and Health-care as a goal of medicine. The positive part, which was quite brief, concerned the continuing work of the AMA in its advocacy for better conditions for physicians and for a more equitable distribution of health care.
Medicine as a part of science continues to be assailed by anti-science political groups. 57% of doctors surveyed said they would not choose Medicine as a profession if given the chance to relive their lives. Part of this is the failure of Medicare and other insurance mechanisms to properly compensate physicians. Part is due to attacks on the profession by anti-science anti education social media and state legislatures. Whereas Medicine was once the profession of choice for the best students, universities are seeing the premed majors overtaken by computer-related fields. Dr. Resneck also referred to the importance of maintaining high standards of medical ethics, which is increasingly difficult in today’s political and economic climate.
With respect to the specifics of health care, Dr. Resneck stressed the attack on the medical professions by laws and regulations that outlaw people rights to their own bodies, manifest in anti-abortion and anti-gender affirming procedures, anti-education book banning, political opposition to measures, supported by the majority of Americans, that would reduce gun violence, and the difficulty of achieving improvements in government procedures for reimbursement of health care services. The AMA is involved in trying to elicit medically sound decisions on these.
Dr Resneck was positive, if not very optimistic about the AMA’s important role in advocacy for reform of Medicare and the Health-Care system, reform that is essential for the sustainability of Medicine as a profession.
We recommend AMA to add to their Library resources from LPBI Group:
A. PharmaceuticalIntelligence.com Journal, 6,170 articles
B. BioMed e-Series in Five specialties of Medicine in English and Spanish – 37 books
https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/five-bilingual-biomed-e-series/
C. e-Proceedings and Tweet Collection of top 100 Conferences in Medicine and Biotech
D. Gallery of Images, N = +6600
E. Library of 300 Audio Podcasts
https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/audio-podcasts/
SOURCES from AMA
In his outgoing remarks to the AMA House of Delegates, AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., acknowledged the challenges facing the medical profession, including burnout, Medicare payment reform, and scope of practice expansions. He highlighted the importance of unity and perseverance in advancing the profession’s goals and how the AMA is aligned in the fight with the AMA Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians. Learn more about the AMA Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians: https://bit.ly/AMA_RecoveryPlan Get exclusive updates on the AMA Annual meeting: https://bit.ly/AMA_Meeting2023 The AMA is your powerful ally in patient care. Join now. https://bit.ly/AMAJoinRenew — Follow the AMA on YouTube: @americanmedicalassociation 🎥 Watch AMA Update for the latest in health care news for physicians: https://bit.ly/AMA_Update ✉️ Subscribe to AMA Morning Rounds newsletter, with the news you need every morning delivered to your inbox: https://bit.ly/AMA-MorningRounds 🎧 Listen to our latest podcast episodes now: https://bit.ly/AMA_Podcasts 📱 Download AMA Connect for news, podcasts, video updates and learning in one place: https://apple.co/3URzNES #physicianadvocacy #futureofhealthcare #medicine #amarecoveryplan #scopeofpractice #physicianburnout #telehealth #telemedicine #fightingfordocs
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