Spending on Lobbying Doubled From 2000 to 2008 (AMA #2) - Turf War Smackdown: The AMA and MDs vs. DNPs

Now it is all making sense...the doctors see the threat emerging from
the nurses and intend to use the government to enforce their status in
health care.

Turf War Smackdown: The AMA and MDs vs. DNPs
<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/mmMP/~3/kHD7hr9Z5YI/turf-war-sm
ackdown-ama-and-mds-vs-dnps.html>

Posted: 27 Aug 2009 07:42 AM PDT

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-nursing-doctorate,0,470850
7.story> -- The University of Michigan-Flint is launching an online
doctoral program in nursing this fall. The university says the nurse
practitioners it trains will be able to assess and manage medical and
nursing problems in a variety of specialties and settings. It says the
new degree program is a response to a looming shortage of nurses and
doctors. The four-year Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program
<http://www.umflint.edu/graduateprograms/nursing.htm> is aimed at
skills needed for advanced nursing practice in primary health care.

And what does the AMA think about the DNP alternative
<http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/professio
nal-issues/20080625ama-dnp.html> to a "looming shortage of nurses and
doctors?"

Delegates at the recent annual meeting of the AMA left little room for
doubt when it came to their views on the appropriate role of nurses in
patients' medical care. Although nurses -- including those with a
terminal degree in nursing -- are welcomed as part of the medical team,
physicians still need to take the lead.

Despite strongly worded opposition from national nursing organization
representatives who attended the meeting, the delegates adopted a
resolution that called for new AMA policy stipulating that doctors of
nursing practice, or DNPs, "must practice as part of a medical team
under the supervision of a licensed physician who has final authority
and responsibility for the patient." The delegates further directed the
AMA to oppose a recent move by the National Board of Medical Examiners,
or NBME, which earlier this spring announced
<http://www.nbme.org/PDF/springsummer2008Examiner.pdf> it would develop
and administer a certification exam for graduates of DNP programs.

Spending on Lobbying Doubled From 2000 to 2008
<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/mmMP/~3/gVqPPEVNpp8/spending-on
-lobbying-doubled-from-2000.html>

Posted: 27 Aug 2009 05:56 AM PDT

<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SpaChS85kMI/AAAAAAAALIo/BttntWrao
-o/s1600-h/lobby2.bmp>

<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SpaCh96s_rI/AAAAAAAALIw/snAFAaBhk
j8/s1600-h/lobby1.bmp> The top chart above shows that spending on
lobbying in the U.S. more than doubled between 2000 ($1.56 billion) and
2008 ($3.30 billion), according to the searchable lobbying database of
OpenSecrets.org <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php> . The
bottom chart shows the top 20 organizations that spent the most on
lobbying between 1998-2009.

One of the indirect, and often hidden costs of increased government
spending, changes in tax policy, or increased government regulation, or
even the potential for increased government regulation of industries
(pharmaceuticals, health care) or higher taxes (windfall oil profits
tax), or the threat of deregulation of industries controlled by trade
groups like the AMA, is the cost of potentially wasteful "rent seeking
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking> ," aka lobbying. From the
list of top lobbying spenders, it looks a lot like the industries and
companies that had the most to gain or lose from government action
(health care, real estate, mortgage, GM, and Exxon) over the last ten
years spent the most on lobbying to influence legislation in their
favor.

Maybe it's also the case that some of the most heavily regulated
industries (health care, health insurance, oil, telecommunications, real
estate) spend the most on lobbying. For example, in the largely
unregulated high-tech sector, large industry leaders spent relatively
small amounts on lobbying in 2008: Dell Computer ($160,000), eBay ($2
million), Amazon ($1.3 million), Google ($2.8 million) and Yahoo! ($2.35
million). Compare those amounts to the heavily regulated and heavily
taxed Exxon, which spent $29 million on lobbying in 2008, or more than
10 times more than Google or Yahoo!

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Dear Wine Mike;

The situation is similar to the slightly muted
opposition to the new Doctorate of Nursing that USF is now issuing.
When the course of study has been completed the DRN's take a chunk of
the same board certifications MD doctors take for full certification as
a DRN.

This has not gone down very well with the CMA and the AMA. Gosh and golly I wonder why?.

It
all goes to competition and the economics of competition. Prices rise
when the demand exceeds the supply and prices fall when the supply
exceeds the demand.

This is why there is a special national
medical board whose name I forget which sets the numbers of entrants to
medical colleges nationally. This is why there are so many Medical
College in Mexico and the Caribbean graduating doctors whonot surprisingly enough qualified to enter any USA resident program at any
teaching hospital nationally. And take and pass all the preliminary
board exams for residency programs as well.

Got to keep the numbers of people becoming doctors down to keep the competition down and prices high.

It's
the same attitude in Texas where medical clinics are being opened in
shopping malls offering nicks cuts and dents and shots type of one stop
medical care by a certified RN. The Texas AMA got a law passed
requiring each clinic to have an MD doctor associated with it - for the
proper fee of course. Great way to keep the clinics non-competitive
with the extra cost factors from having an MD assigned to each.

It's all to similar to the AMA's decades long opposition to black
doctors and the battle they have had to keep black doctors from getting
into a practice. Which forced the necessity of balck physicians the
National Medical Association.

At the time the AMA started it's opposition to Blacks Jews and Women
becoming doctors around the end of the 1800's by getting for profit
medical colleges shut down through state laws black physicians
constituted 2% of all doctors. Today black physicians constitute 2% of
all doctors. Just last year the president of the AMA issued a formal
apology to all black physicians for the AMA's opposition decades long
opposition to black physicians.

Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
Hostis res Publica
Morte ai Tiranni
Dum Spiro, Pugno

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