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AMA’s Losing Battle

Rich Kirkner

The American Medical Association declared Georgia “ground zero” in its battle against non-medical doctors prescribing therapeutic drugs. For the time being, they’ve won. That is, legislation that would have allowed Georgia O.D.s to prescribe all drugs for treating ocular disease didn’t get through the state’s legislature.

The AMA’s bravado only shows how out of step this once-esteemed organization is with the times.

All the AMA’s rhetoric and cash can’t obfuscate the fact that therapeutic privileges for optometrists is a sensible public health policy for every state. Giving broader privileges to optometrists makes even more sense. When you expand access to care—and put that care in the hands of skilled, qualified doctors—you make people healthier. No preaching to the choir needed here.

Viki E. Staley, lobbyist for medical and ophthalmological organizations in Georgia, says those groups think that anyone who wants to prescribe medications must go to medical school.

Yet, that doesn’t keep thousands of unqualified, medical school-trained doctors already in Georgia, and in every other state, from treating ocular disease. They’re the non-ophthalmological variety, who already have the right to prescribe any drug for ocular disease. The fact that they don’t know as much about the eye as an optometric physician doesn’t faze the AMA.

The AMA doesn’t see that its argument against non-medical doctors prescribing is flawed. If you follow that logic, then only med school graduates should fill the prescriptions, too. No one knows more about drug reactions, mechanisms, indications and contraindications than pharmacists. Pharmacists have saved many a doctor—O.D., D.O. and M.D.—from prescription mistakes.

The real reason the AMA takes potshots at “non-physicians”: To boost its flagging membership roster. It’s a light version of the National Rifle Association’s hyperbolic ravings against gun control. If the AMA can get physicians—the non-optometric variety—fired up about something, anything, the organization can attract more members. After all, only 34% of M.D.s and D.O.s are AMA members. The AMA’s own membership task force told last year’s annual meeting that roles will decline even further unless the AMA does something. So, the organization has trained its sights on non-medical doctors.

The AMA shouldn’t get overconfident after Georgia, though. It may have hit ground zero for now, but that’s a moving target. It’s moving to wherever people want better health care.

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