Dear American Medical Association:
As somebody whose family includes a doctor, a nurse, and a dental assistant, I have had the predisposition to have respect for medical practicioners. I have heard the horror stories, and I have read what people have had to say, but I have so far done nothing about this matter . But when faced with immediate and blatant corruption, that has resulted in death of someone near and dear to me, I can no longer afford to be silent.
In 1990s, the people in the alternative health community described the AMA as a mafia. As I've found out later, from dealings with people who had nothing to do with alternative medicine, they spoke more truly than they knew. The corruption of AMA is extraordinary. You run scams that kill people and cost vast money to the taxpayer. You artificially limit the number of doctors, resulting in medical prices becoming outrageous. You hide evidence of medical errors and enlist corrupt lawyers to silence their witnesses. What I have seen goes far beyond professional incompetence and is in fact vast criminal corruption.
It does not escape my attention that the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry have been running a scam. Psychiatric professionals have been prescribing to people, often totally inappropriately, dangerous and expensive multi-drug combinations that ruin their health or kill them. The tab for this is picked up either by taxpayer or by insurance companies or by the patient out of pocket. In either case, dangerous and expensive drugs are being given to people who are either not sick, who are misdiagnosed, or whose disorder does not require these combinations to treat. Of these people, there are many whose health and life is destroyed by these multi-drug combinations.
I had a friend who went to a doctor for situational depression brought about by a middle life crisis. The professional told her that she had to take medication for the rest of her life. She refused, and now she's completely healthy and functional. If she had taken the doctor's advice, she wouldn't have been.
How do I know this? Because on June 5, 2010, someone I loved wound up dead outside of her house. She was doing exceptionally well and had exceptional physical health. She was runninga successful business; ran marathons; and did projects involving highly influential people and significant contributions to America. She was a genius who had finished Harvard in three years. She also was a caring, compassionate, ethical woman who had constantly gone out of her way to help others. She died, two months before her 37th birthday, to everyone's shock and bereavement, as a result of inappropriate and dangerous medication that she had been prescribed.
When I moved to Australia, the doctors here were in shock over what I had been prescribed in America. They said in so many words that this combination was going to kill me. They cut me down from four medications to one medication, and I've been doing well enough. But many people back in America, who continue to take these combinations, have become sicker as a result of them.
It likewise does not escape my attention that you have been running another scam: Limiting the number of medical school admissions and graduations in order to drive up the price of medicine. Limited supply will always meet rising demand at a huge and exorbitant price, and that has been the true structural problem with American medicine - one that neither Democrats nor Republicans have had the courage to address. Not enough doctors and many patients mean exorbitant costs, whether paid for by business or by government. In either case, the costs are far higher than they should be, and the direct cause is distortion brought about through this cartelization of American medicine.
A related result is that doctors are overworked and error-prone, which not only makes their lifestyle over-stressed but results in the medical errors. These errors only drive up malpractice costs - adding vastly to the already outrageous prices of medicine - but also result in unnecessary illness and death. Cartelization of American medicine by your organization is directly responsible for the outrageous medical costs, as much as it is responsible for needless injury and death of countless patients. And it is only when significantly more doctors are graduated that these problems can be expected to change in any kind of a lasting way.
As if these two scams were not bad enough, there is another one, and one that likewise costs lives of many. And that is as follows: Corruption within American medicine has reached a truly staggering level. I have been witness to medical professionals murdering their patients and doing such things as - enlisting corrupt lawyers to bury the cases of witnesses against them; getting coroners to remove affected organs prior to autopsy; lobbying judges to silence, threaten, even falsely accuse witnesses; and many other wrongs. This corruption has grown up unchecked by the AMA, which leads me to believe that it has grown up with its approval. And that is an indictment against your organization as much as are the pharmaceutical scam and the cartelization of American medicine.
There are many people among those likely to be your victims who believe in being universally loving or in avoiding anger. I do not feel that way. Corruption and corruption, and murder is murder, and these deserve to be known as such and treated accordingly. The scams that you have been running and the corruption that you have allowed have not gone unnoticed. Expect action unless you are willing to change your ways.