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AMA wrong on Price

Recently, the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed Trump’s nominee, Dr. Tom Price, for secretary of Health and Human Services, a favorite also of our own Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers. First, know that the AMA represents only about a quarter of physicians in the U.S. The AMA is a loud, persistent and well-funded voice that speaks for the business side of medicine, not for the patients. It does not represent me, nor does it represent many of the doctors in Eastern Washington.

If you yearn for the days before Obamacare (aka the ACA), when 20 million fewer citizens had health insurance, when health insurance companies were free to refuse insurance to anyone with a pre-existing condition (or make it impossibly expensive) and when there was no standardization of health insurance offerings, leaving us all trying to compare apples and oranges, then Tom Price and Cathy McMorris Rodgers are definitely your go-to people.

The much-maligned individual mandate of Obamacare had some chance of eventually reining in costs, but that’ll be gone, too. When Price and McMorris Rodgers tout “market-based solutions,” you’d better check your wallet.

Jerry LeClaire, M.D.

Spokane

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