Some AMA Policies Pertinent to Healthcare Reform Debate

H-165.856 Health Insurance Market Regulation
Our AMA supports the following principles for health insurance market regulation:(1) There should be greater national uniformity of market regulation across health insurance markets, regardless of type of sub-market (e.g., large group, small group, individual), geographic location, or type of health plan;(2) State variation in market regulation is permissible so long as states demonstrate that departures from national regulations would not drive up the number of uninsured, and so long as variations do not unduly hamper the development of multi-state group purchasing alliances, or create adverse selection;(3) Risk-related subsidies such as subsidies for high-risk pools, reinsurance, and risk adjustment should be financed through general tax revenues rather than through strict community rating or premium surcharges;(4) Strict community rating should be replaced with modified community rating, risk bands, or risk corridors. Although some degree of age rating is acceptable, an individual’s genetic information should not be used to determine his or her premium;(5) Insured individuals should be protected by guaranteed renewability;(6) Guaranteed renewability regulations and multi-year contracts may include provisions allowing insurers to single out individuals for rate changes or other incentives related to changes in controllable lifestyle choices;(7) Guaranteed issue regulations should be rescinded;(8) Insured individuals wishing to switch plans should be subject to a lesser degree of risk rating and pre-existing conditions limitations than individuals who are newly seeking coverage; and(9) The regulatory environment should enable rather than impede private market innovation in product development and purchasing arrangements. Specifically:(a) Legislative and regulatory barriers to the formation and operation of group purchasing alliances should, in general, be removed;(b) Benefit mandates should be minimized to allow markets to determine benefit packages and permit a wide choice of coverage options; and(c) Any legislative and regulatory barriers to the development of multi-year insurance contracts should be identified and removed.


H-165.866 All Americans Must Have Health Insurance
Our AMA strongly affirms and calls upon all of the state medical societies and all other national physician specialty organizations to strongly affirm the joint statement, "All Americans Must Have Health Insurance." (The Statement was developed in 1999 by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynocologists, the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Medical Association. The Statement was further endorsed by other physician specialty organizations.)




H-165.888 Evaluating Health System Reform Proposals
Our AMA will continue its efforts to ensure that health system reform proposals adhere to the following principles:(1) Physicians maintain primary ethical responsibility to advocate for their patients' interests and needs.(2) Unfair concentration of market power of payers is detrimental to patients and physicians, if patient freedom of choice or physician ability to select mode of practice is limited or denied. Single-payer systems clearly fall within such a definition and, consequently, should continue to be opposed by the AMA. Reform proposals should balance fairly the market power between payers and physicians or be opposed.(3) All health system reform proposals should include a valid estimate of implementation cost, based on all health care expenditures to be included in the reform; and supports the concept that all health system reform proposals should identify specifically what means of funding (including employer-mandated funding, general taxation, payroll or value-added taxation) will be used to pay for the reform proposal and what the impact will be.(4) All physicians participating in managed care plans and medical delivery systems must be able without threat of punitive action to comment on and present their positions on the plan's policies and procedures for medical review, quality assurance, grievance procedures, credentialing criteria, and other financial and administrative matters, including physician representation on the governing board and key committees of the plan.(5) Any national legislation for health system reform should include sufficient and continuing financial support for inner-city and rural hospitals, community health centers, clinics, special programs for special populations and other essential public health facilities that serve underserved populations that otherwise lack the financial means to pay for their health care.(6) Health system reform proposals and ultimate legislation should result in adequate resources to enable medical schools and residency programs to produce an adequate supply and appropriate generalist/specialist mix of physicians to deliver patient care in a reformed health care system.(7) All civilian federal government employees, including Congress and the Administration, should be covered by any health care delivery system passed by Congress and signed by the President.(8) True health reform is impossible without true tort reform.


H-165.904 Universal Health Coverage
Our AMA: (1) seeks to ensure that federal health system reform include payment for the urgent and emergent treatment of illnesses and injuries of indigent, non-U.S. citizens in the U.S. or its territories; (2) seeks federal legislation that would require the federal government to provide financial support to any individuals, organizations, and institutions providing legally-mandated health care services to foreign nationals and other persons not covered under health system reform; and (3) continues to assign a high priority to the problem of the medically uninsured and underinsured and continues to work toward national consensus on providing access to adequate health care coverage for all Americans


H-165.916 Government Controlled Medicine
Our AMA strongly reaffirms its unwavering opposition against the encroachment of government in the practice of medicine as well as any attempts to covertly change the American health care system to a government program with the subsequent loss of precious personal freedoms, including the right of physicians and patients to contract privately for health care without government interference.


H-165.920 Individual Health Insurance
Our AMA:(1) affirms its support for pluralism of health care delivery systems and financing mechanisms in obtaining universal coverage and access to health care services;(2) recognizes incremental levels of coverage for different groups of the uninsured, consistent with finite resources, as a necessary interim step toward universal access;(3) actively supports the principle of the individual's right to select his/her health insurance plan and actively support ways in which the concept of individually selected and individually owned health insurance can be appropriately integrated, in a complementary position, into the Association's position on achieving universal coverage and access to health care services. To do this, our AMA will:(a) Continue to support equal tax treatment for payment of health insurane coverage whether the employer provides the coverage for the employee or whether the employer provides a financial contribution to the employee to purchase individually selected and individually owned health insurance coverage, including the exemption of both employer and employee contributions toward the individually owned insurance from FICA (Social Security and Medicare) and federal and state unemployment taxes;(b) Support the concept that the tax treatment would be the same as long as the employer's contribution toward the cost of the employee's health insurance is at least equivalent to the same dollar amount that the employer would pay when purchasing the employee's insurance directly;(c) Study the viability of provisions that would allow individual employees to opt out of group plans without jeopardizing the ability of the group to continue their employer sponsored group coverage; and(d) Work toward establishment of safeguards, such as a health care voucher system, to ensure that to the extent that employer direct contributions made to the employee for the purchase of individually selected and individually owned health insurance coverage continue, such contributions are used only for that purpose when the employer direct contributions are less than the cost of the specified minimum level of coverage. Any excess of the direct contribution over the cost of such coverage could be used by the individual for other purposes;(4) will identify any further means through which universal coverage and access can be achieved;(5) supports individually selected and individually-owned health insurance as the preferred method for people to obtain health insurance coverage; and supports and advocates a system where individually-purchased and owned health insurance coverage is the preferred option, but employer-provided coverage is still available to the extent the market demands it;(6) supports the individual’s right to select his/her health insurance plan and to receive the same tax treatment for individually purchased coverage, for contributions toward employer-provided coverage, and for completely employer provided coverage;(7) supports immediate tax equity for health insurance costs of self-employed and unemployed persons;(8) supports legislation to remove paragraph (4) of Section 162(l) of the US tax code, which discriminates against the self-employed by requiring them to pay federal payroll (FICA) tax on health insurance premium expenditures;(9) supports legislation requiring a "maintenance of effort" period, such as one or two years, during which employers would be required to add to the employee’s salary the cash value of any health insurance coverage they directly provide if they discontinue that coverage or if the employee opts out of the employer-provided plan;(10) encourages through all appropriate channels the development of educational programs to assist consumers in making informed choices as to sources of individual health insurance coverage;(11) encourages employers, unions, and other employee groups to consider the merits of risk-adjusting the amount of the employer direct contributions toward individually purchased coverage. Under such an approach, useful risk adjustment measures such as age, sex, and family status would be used to provide higher-risk employees with a larger contribution and lower-risk employees with a lesser one;(12) supports a replacement of the present federal income tax exclusion from employees’ taxable income of employer-provided health insurance coverage with tax credits for individuals and families, while allowing all health insurance expenditures to be exempt from federal and state payroll taxes, including FICA (Social Security and Medicare) payroll tax, FUTA (federal unemployment tax act) payroll tax, and SUTA (state unemployment tax act) payroll tax;(13) advocates that, upon replacement, with tax credits, of the exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance from employees’ federal income tax, any states and municipalities conforming to this federal tax change be required to use the resulting increase in state and local tax revenues to finance health insurance tax credits, vouchers or other coverage subsidies; and(14) believes that refundable, advanceable tax credits inversely related to income are preferred over public sector expansions as a means of providing coverage to the uninsured.




H-165.969 Federation and Physician Unity on Health System Reform
The AMA renews its call to the Federation, including state and specialty societies, to work together in a professional and collegial fashion to forge consensus in health system reform.


H-165.985 Opposition to Nationalized Health Care
Our AMA reaffirms the following statement of principles as a positive articulation of the Association's opposition to socialized or nationalized health care:(1) Free market competition among all modes of health care delivery and financing, with the growth of any one system determined by the number of people who prefer that mode of delivery, and not determined by preferential federal subsidy, regulations or promotion.(2) Freedom of patients to select and to change their physician or medical care plan, including those patients whose care is financed through Medicaid or other tax-supported programs, recognizing that in the choice of some plans the patient is accepting limitations in the free choice of medical services. (3) Full and clear information to consumers on the provisions and benefits offered by alternative medical care and health benefit plans, so that the choice of a source of medical care delivery is an informed one.(4) Freedom of physicians to choose whom they will serve, to establish their fees at a level which they believe fairly reflect the value of their services, to participate or not participate in a particular insurance plan or method of payment, and to accept or decline a third party allowance as payment in full for a service.(5) Inclusion in all methods of medical care payment of mechanisms to foster increased cost awareness by both providers and recipients of service, which could include patient cost sharing in an amount which does not preclude access to needed care, deferral by physicians of a specified portion of fee income, and voluntary professionally directed peer review.(6) The use of tax incentives to encourage provision of specified adequate benefits, including catastrophic expense protection, in health benefit plans.(7) The expansion of adequate health insurance coverage to the presently uninsured, through formation of insurance risk pools in each state, sliding-scale vouchers to help those with marginal incomes purchase pool coverage, development of state funds for reimbursing providers of uncompensated care, and reform of the Medicaid program to provide uniform adequate benefits to all persons with incomes below the poverty level.(8) Replacing the present Medicare program with a system developed by the AMA of pre-funded vouchers to older persons to purchase health insurance with comprehensive benefits, including catastrophic coverage.(9) Development of improved methods of financing long-term care expense through a combination of private and public resources, including encouragement of privately prefunded long-term care financing to the extent that personal income permits, assurance of access to needed services when personal resources are inadequate to finance needed care, and promotion of family caregiving.


H-165.841 Comprehensive Health System Reform
Our AMA supports the overall goal of ensuring that every American has access to affordable high quality health care coverage and will work with interested members of Congress to seek legislation consistent with AMA policy.




H-165.847 Comprehensive Health System Reform
1. Comprehensive health system reform, which achieves access to quality health care for all Americans while improving the physician practice environment, is of the highest priority for our AMA.2. Our AMA recognizes that as our health care delivery system evolves, direct and meaningful physician input is essential and must be present at every level of debate. (Res. 613, A-06; Reaffirmation I-07; Res. 107, A-08)

Sphere: Related Content