'Despicable AMA To Oppose National Health Plan'

The AMA was never a bastion of enlightenment. Their main concern is doctors' salaries. From Turkana at The Left Coaster here.

While Daily Kos diarist DrSteveB wants everyone to know about the terrific, 16,000 member Physicians For A National Health Program, the New York Times is reporting that the largest physicians' organization in the nation intends to be an impediment to a national health care plan:

As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.

The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors’ group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America’s largest physician organization.

While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be “provided through private markets, as they are currently.” It is now reacting, for the first time, to specific legislative proposals being drafted by Congress.

In other words, they oppose it on principle. Due to a collective lack of principles! And given the great success of the private system, in denying access to medical care to millions of Americans, it is now clear that the AMA no longer is interested in one of the basic tenets of the Hippocratic Oath:

...never do harm to anyone.

For the AMA seems to think profit comes first. . . .