FEATURE
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
MEMBERS Move Medicine
Robert Couch, MD, MBA
I
n February, I attended the American
Medical Association (AMA) National
Advocacy Conference (NAC) held in
Washington D.C. During my time there,
I had meetings with Senate Leader Mitch
McConnell, Rep. Andy Barr, and Rep. Brett
Guthrie, and staff members for Rep. Thomas
Massie and Rep. James Comer, while others in
the delegation met
with Congressman
John Yarmuth—all
to discuss the fu-
ture of health care.
Without my AMA
membership, I
would not have been able to speak with these leaders on behalf of
Greater Louisville and Kentucky physicians, as well as our patients.
Through my time at NAC, I experienced firsthand that working
together with the AMA gets results. Most recently, following strong
GLMS, KMA and AMA advocacy efforts, Anthem announced its
plan to eliminate the Modifier 25 payment reductions. This year, the
AMA and Anthem—whose health plans cover more than 40 million
people—will pursue collaboration in four key areas to:
» » Enhance consumer and patient health care literacy
» » Develop and implement value-based payment models for
primary and specialty care physicians
» » Improve access to timely, actionable data to enhance pa-
tient care
» » Streamline or eliminate low-value prior-authorization re-
quirements
The AMA is also asking Congress to closely scrutinize the mas-
sive proposed merger of CVS Health and Aetna because of the
potential negative impact it poses to American health care consum-
ers—much like when the AMA fought and won the landmark ruling
in federal court to block Aetna’s $37 billion acquisition of Humana.
Furthermore, the AMA has been a tremendous partner with
organized medicine in Greater Louisville and the state of Kentucky,
and Kentucky physicians have been, and are, an integral part of the
AMA. The AMA Litigation Center has worked closely with the
Kentucky Medical Association (KMA) as we fight to keep Medical
Review Panels in Kentucky. Lastly, we all worked together to oppose
the insurance company mergers that would have further increased
the monopoly power of large insurers.
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JUNE 2018
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