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AMA Meeting
Highlights
Hundreds of physicians, medical students, residents, and fellows met in Chicago to consider a wide array of proposals to help fulfill the AMA’s core mission of promoting medicine and improving public health.
The high-level issues from the 2019 AMA Annual Meeting, held June 8-12 in Chicago, have been identified in this report.
Explore emerging technologies to automate the prior authorization process.
Delegates unanimously approved an MSD resolution to use emerging technologies like blockchain technology to reduce
the burdens associated with the prior authorization process.
Let mature minors override refusenik parents on vaccination.
Delegates adopted a new policy to support “state policies allowing minors to override their parents’ refusal for vaccinations” and encourage “state legislatures to establish comprehensive vaccine and minor consent policies.”
Time to scrutinize PBMs’ outsized role in Rx drug decision-making.
Delegates adopted a new policy to support managers (PBMs) under state departments of insurance, requiring the application
of manufacturer rebates and pharmacy price concessions; support efforts to ensure PBMs are subject to state and federal laws that prevent discrimination against patients; and support increased transparency in how direct and indirect remuneration fees are determined and calculated.
Better data needed to prevent violence against transgender people. The House of Delegates asked the AMA to “partner with other medical organizations and stakeholders to immediately increase efforts to educate the general public, legislators and members of law enforcement crimes against transgender individuals, highlighting the disproportionate number
of black transgender women who have succumbed to violent deaths.”
Health records of immigrant children should not be given to the courts. Delegates directed the AMA to advocate that health care services provided to minors in immigrant detention and
border patrol stations focus solely on the health and well-being of the children and and psychological records and social-work courts without patient consent.
The ACA should be strengthened, not abandoned.
The AMA House of Delegates adopted a new policy to boost its push for universal coverage by improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) while maintaining the AMA’s opposition to a single-payer approach to health system reform.
Medicaid should be extended to cover “fourth trimester” and beyond. Delegates directed the AMA to “work with relevant stakeholders to support extension of Medicaid coverage to 12 months postpartum.”
Get rid of market barriers to appropriate pain management.
The AMA House of Delegates adopted
a new policy to advocate for state legislatures and other policymakers, health insurance companies, and companies to remove barriers, including prior authorization, to non-opioid pain care; support amendments to opioid- restriction policies to allow for exceptions that enable physicians, when medically necessary, to exceed statutory, regulatory, or other thresholds for post-operative
care and other medical procedures
or conditions; and to oppose health management company utilization- management policies, including prior authorization, that restrict access to post-operative pain care, including opioid analgesics, if those policies are not based upon sound clinical evidence, data, and emerging research.
LEARN MORE about the actions at the 2019 AMA Annual Meeting on the AMA’s website: www.ama-assn.org
186 Del Med J | July/August 2019 | Vol. 91 | No. 4
