Members of the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates came close Tuesday to approving support for federal Medicare for All proposals.
AMA House members defeated the Medicare for All support measure by a 47% to 53% vote, in Chicago, at the AMA annual meeting.
Members instead approved a replacement measure that calls for:
- Improving Affordable Care Act (ACA) programs.
- Expanding middle-income Americans' access to the ACA health insurance premium tax credit subsidy programs.
- Expanding access to an ACA subsidy program that helps some ACA exchange plan users pay their co-payments, deductibles and coinsurance amounts.
- Studying the idea of having the government offer all Americans a government-managed "public option" health insurance program.
(Related: Government Could Be the Single Health Care Payer — and the Provider: Democratic Rep)
The AMA represents about 240,000 of the 1.1 million physicians in the United States.
The AMA supported a health insurance mandate in 1915, but it opposed Harry Truman's national health insurance proposal in 1960.
Dr. Barbara McAneny, the AMA's president, said in a statement that the AMA is pursuing sustainable, practical solutions.