AMA reporting needs a second opinion

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200906120010

AMA reporting needs a second opinion
Jamison Foser
June 12, 2009 11:58 am ET


Thursday's New York Times article about the American Medical Association's opposition to the inclusion of a strong public option in health care reform had several serious flaws. As a result, it greatly overstated the significance of the AMA's stance and left out key information that undermines the group's claims.

The most basic flaw in the Times article is that it never made clear who the AMA represents. The article's headline described the AMA as a "Doctors' group." The second paragraph said it "is America's largest physician organization," with "about 250,000 members." The eighth paragraph said the AMA "probably has more influence than any other group in the health care industry." And the 13th described the AMA as "an umbrella group for 180 medical societies" before finally acknowledging it "does not speak for all doctors."

In fact, the AMA speaks for less than one-third of doctors. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 physicians practicing in America today, so the AMA's 250,000 members constitute only about 30 percent of all doctors.

Are the views of AMA members representative of the views of all physicians? The Times didn't even begin to address that question. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported that "the AMA's members tend to be more skeptical" of comprehensive health care reform "than the average doc." Matthew Holt of the widely respected Health Care Blog said the AMA "in general over-represents specialists and those in small practices." The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn added that the medical community does not "speak with the same unified, conservative voice it once did. ... Primary care physicians in partiuclar {sic} -- organized through groups like American Academy of Family Phyisicians {sic} and the American Pediatrics Association -- are generally more liberal and may well speak out in favor of the public plan, if they haven't already."

snip//

But The New York Times ignored the possibility that a public option would lower costs; no such viewpoint or fact was included in the article. The Times did, however, quote another industry group -- America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry lobby -- agreeing with the AMA that a public plan could "significantly increase costs."

That, apparently, is The New York Times' idea of "balance" -- quoting doctors who oppose a public plan and insurers who oppose a public plan.