For those of you who missed Latin class that day, memento mori means, “remember your mortality.”
It seems that the American Medical Association has (albeit a little late in the game) woken up to that fact and gotten religion.
The AMA has invited other healthcare groups to sign onto a letter to the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) on the types of research that should and should not be conducted under ObamaCare. The AMA is concerned about its proposal to "investigate ... optimizing outcomes while addressing burden to individuals, resources, and other stakeholder perspectives."
They should have read the bill before they so aggressively supported its passage.
Why the turnaround? Could it be that America’s physicians worry that including cost in the equation will open the door to rationing down the line?
"We seek further clarification toward the Board's intentions regarding this last component and whether this includes cost analysis," states a sign-on letter scheduled to be sent later this week to PCORI executive director Joseph Selby. "If that is the case, we do not believe that it is consistent with the PCORI's enabling statute."
The issue, at its core, is physician disempowerment. With first insurance companies and now Uncle Sam telling doctors how to practice medicine (step therapy, restrictive formularies, more strident and cumbersome preauthorization requirements, and academic detailing), it’s no wonder that physicians are mad and that the AMA is doing a volte-face on PCORI and comparative effectiveness.
