Dear Editor,

The title of the Report from the States (Medical Sentinel 2001;6(1):33) should be "...Assure our Future," not "Insure."

...The American Medical Association (AMA) is dominated by delegates from specialty organizations instead of delegates appointed by the county and state medical societies, as was its original purpose and policy. In organized medicine solo and general practitioners are being decimated.

Our two-county medical society is of no interest to our physicians. There is very poor attendance at the sporadic meetings at a restaurant. No input, no output and no money!

Physicians at one very good suburban hospital 25 years ago limited staff membership to those physicians in the local community by home and office. Now "itinerant" physicians with many offices all over the metropolitan area dominate the staff, and the hospital has gone bankrupt because of no loyalty to it in the medical community.

The AMA has soiled itself and turned off physicians by its money-seeking, commercial ventures such as the CPT code books that make it an arm of the federal government.

Best wishes to you and AAPS as spokespersons for the individual physician --- "As far as I know we are the only medical organization that has offered any constructive assistance to individual physicians." (Orient JM. AAPS and the Courts. Medical Sentinel 2001;6(1):2.)

You and Dr. Jane Orient are doing a good job!

Robert M. Webster, MD
Jasper, GA

Correspondence originally published in the Medical Sentinel 2001;6(3);73-74. Copyright©2001 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).