[chimeracoder]

> Doctors, ... might all be overpaid relative to other professions, and yet they... have professional organizations, even unions, representing them

Doctors do not have professional organizations or unions representing them.

The AMA is frequently mis-cited by people not familiar with the industry as a union, but it's not one at all. Only 25% of doctors are members of the AMA (most of them only because they require licenses to CPT codes, which the AMA has a monopoly over) and the AMA does not advocate for physicians' interests.

In no meaningful sense does the AMA "represent" doctors at large.

[tommorris]

That's just in the US though. There's a whole world out there that is not the United States.

The British Medical Association certainly claims to be a trade union.

https://www.bma.org.uk/about-us/bma-as-a-trade-union

And they have engaged in collective action - e.g. the junior doctors strike.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/01/what-you-nee...

[epmaybe]

The AMA doesn't advocate for physician interests? How so?

As a student member of the AMA, I can attest that they aren't the most effective organization, but they do plenty to further physician interests.

I think what you're likely getting at is how heterogenous physician interests are considering each specialty.

[chimeracoder]

> The AMA doesn't advocate for physician interests? How so?

The AMA sometimes does things that align with doctors' interests, but only incidentally. It's allegiance is to itself as an institution, not to doctors, and it will further its own interests over doctors' every time the two collide.

As one example listed upthread, they advocate increasing the supply of physicians to lower physician salaries, which is directly against doctors' interests but in line with their own. Similarly, their stranglehold over CPT codes undeniably harms physicians and places them under even more control of payers' interests, but because it provides the AMA with a monopoly stream of revenue, the AMA clutches to it.

> I think what you're likely getting at is how heterogenous physician interests are considering each specialty.

I wasn't, but incidentally, that's the exact problem that unions do have. The leadership has the incentive to throw minority group interests under the bus in order to appease the majority of its membership. Closed shops (the AMA would not be one) are the most ruthless, because the only alternative their members have is to find employment in another industry altogether.

[epmaybe]

I agree that in its current state, the AMA does not do a whole lot for physicians. However, I would argue that if more physicians took an active interest in policies that benefitted all specialties, the AMA wouldn't be this shell of an organization that benefitted themselves more than others.

That being said, maybe sticking with state organizations might be a more fruitful endeavor.

Additionally, while physicians are a heterogenous bunch, there are many issues that almost all physicians agree with. Use the AMA to collectively lobby for those, and stick to the specialty organizations to push for more individual issues.

[chimeracoder]

> Additionally, while physicians are a heterogenous bunch, there are many issues that almost all physicians agree with.

Physicians seem to have collectively decided that there aren't enough of those to justify the drawbacks of unionizing.