Physicians know all too well about the headaches and heartaches associated with prior authorization in medicine today. Here’s a handy glossary—or perhaps a devil’s dictionary—to help guide you through the folly, with pointers to how the AMA is standing up to insurance companies to eliminate care delays, patient harm and practice hassles.

Also new for the AMA. The whole shebang.

Through various actions at the 2023 AMA Interim Meeting, the House of Delegates has made it unmistakably clear that the unsustainable Medicare payment system poses a dire threat to patients’ access to high-quality physician care across the nation. In addition to this year’s 2% cut in Medicare physician pay, doctors face a further 3.37% cut set to take effect in January. After adjusting for inflation, physician pay actually fell by 26% since 2001.

“Physicians heed the idea of ‘first do not harm,’” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH. “Yet the payment system year after year inflicts harm on the ability of physician practices to stay afloat. We also are aware of the First Law of Holes. When you find yourself in one, stop digging. We are in a veritable crater. Cutting payments is only taking us deeper.”

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang, and catch up on the other highlights from the Interim Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

Nearly 700 physicians and medical students are gathering this week just a few miles away from Capitol Hill for the 2023 AMA Interim Meeting, where they will consider proposals across a wide range of clinical practice, payment, medical education and public health topics.

But there is one issue that is clearly at the top of agenda for the AMA House of Delegates: The need to stop the 3.37% Medicare physician pay cut set for 2024 and enact broader Medicare reforms to ensure that the 65 million Americans who rely on it have continued access to high-quality physician care.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.

A coalition of physician members of Congress has introduced a discussion draft of legislation to reform the budget-neutrality policies applied to the Medicare physician payment schedule.

This legislative proposal, largely based on work that emerged from the AMA Medicare Reform Workgroup, offers practical policy improvements that provide some needed stability to the physician payment system by assuring that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ payment policy is based on reality—not projections.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.