The Art and Science of Medicine is our North Star
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Colleagues:
This week a framework agreement was reached on the NYS Budget, but many policy and spending details are still being negotiated. Next week’s President’s Corner message will be devoted to highlighting how it will affect your practices and your patients.
Your MSSNY leadership participated this week in candidate interviews for physicians vying for positions in AMA Leadership. Each candidate questioned why our AMA has not been more visible given the current changes in public health, education, and looming cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. As background, many of our members went to the AMA National Advocacy Conference in February and were told by AMA lobbyists it was best to work behind the scenes to secure restoration of last year’s Medicare cut. We did as they said, only straying to focus our legislature on the importance of Medicaid and maintaining adequate funding for both vital lifelines for our practices and our patients.
It is now May, the cuts have not been restored, and Medicare and Medicaid still are under threat. We have seen three measles deaths and an outbreak affecting nearly 1,000 reported cases, of which 97% are unvaccinated, and still cannot get HHS leadership to unequivocally recommend measles vaccination as the best means of prevention. The cost of a complicated admission can easily exceed $100,000, and for that money we can vaccinate 2,000 individuals. This should not be controversial, and we as physician scientists must speak up in support consistently with MSSNY Policy 312.971. The AMA put out a statement on March 5 but did not ask that all leading voices, including HHS, need to speak strongly in advocacy for the MMR vaccine.
The bedrock of MSSNY—your medical society—are the policies passed through resolutions in your House of Delegates. The art and science of medicine is our North Star, and our AMA delegates will remind the AMA that unless we are at the table, both behind the scenes and in the media, we will be on the menu.
Organized medicine must be more vocal, must be more visible, must be surgical in their approach, and must unite the house of medicine behind a sustainable system that is physician led and patient centric. Our legislators must support this by tying our payments automatically to the medical economic index and not tying our hands through needless prior authorization and administrative hassles. The system that only rewards the administrators like Medicare disadvantage plans must end.
We have so much work to do. Please support our MSSNYPAC. And if you are not already a member, please join MSSNY.
All the best,
David Jakubowicz, MD, FACS
MSSNY President
