Victory! The AMA is Out of the Coalition Opposing Medicare For All!

Over forty of JASC members and our allies chanting “Get out of the way!” holding hand made tombstones and signs would not seem like a formidable match for the largest physician group in the United States, the American Medical Association.

“The time is up for us to sit on the sidelines and complain about things,” says Reggie, JASC member who helped take over the floor of the AMA’s annual convention this June in Chicago. “I have two grown daughters, five grown grandkids, and five young great-grandkids. We’ve got to fight for them now, to preserve and improve what we have for the future.”

Reggie and other JASC Health Care and Economic Justice leaders helped lead the“die-in” that pressured the AMA to drop out of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a lobby founded last year by private insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical makers. The Partnership has spent hundreds of millions so far to stop the expansion of health care coverage.

Members of Jane Addams Senior Caucus joined over a dozen groups and about 400 people at the AMA’s Annual Convention in Chicago this past June with that goal in mind. And it worked.

The importance of this win cannot be overstated.  Decades of education and direct action brought JASC members, activists and medical professionals to rally inside and outside the Hyatt Regency to make sure the AMA heard how the current system puts profits over patients’ well-being. Caregivers and the chronically ill gave testimony to the delegates and passersby how insurers and ballooning health care costs kept them and their loved ones from accessing needed care.

To be clear, the physicians’ group has not dropped its opposition to single-payer Medicare for All officially, but its recent 53%-47% delegate vote was the closest they have come to changing their official position since it first opposed single-payer in the 1940s. More importantly, the AMA will no longer be contributing to the millions spent by the Partnership to kill the bill. Last year alone, the members of the Partnership collectively spent $143 million on lobbying Congress according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

To see the video from the AMA action on June 8th, please click HERE!