It's no secret that AMA CPT applications are full of now-sounds-dated language about whether an applicant's CPT code "perpetuates social bias" (? structural racism) and "propagates" it. (No, sir, I'm just measuring potassium).
Now RFK Jr has launched a direct attack on AMA CPT as a "Monopoly" which favors "special interests" and he asks the American Public to comment to his RFI by September 14. Transcript below.
Find the three-minute HHS video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gam-7T9KnV8
Find coverage at Medical Economics here:
Here's a transcript:
Hi, I'm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., your HHS secretary.
Every time that you receive a medical bill, you pay for more than your care. You also pay for a billing system that most Americans have never heard of. Today, we're taking the first step toward changing that.
The Trump administration has launched a formal request for information on the future of medical coding and billing. We want to hear from patients, doctors, nurses, hospitals, the innovators, and every American who believes that healthcare should serve patients, and not special interests.
Here's the problem. Every time your doctor bills your insurance company, or a federal program like Medicare or Medicaid, that claim includes medical billing codes called Current Procedural Terminology, or CPT codes. These CPT codes identify the tests, the procedures, the evaluations, and services that you receive.
CPT codes are owned exclusively by the American Medical Association, the AMA. Despite its name, only about 20 percent of America's physicians belong to the AMA. Decades ago, Congress gave the AMA a de facto monopoly over these codes to help manage our national healthcare billing system.
Today, the AMA licenses those codes and collects hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty payments every year from healthcare providers, insurers, and health IT companies that rely upon them. Last year alone, organizations across all of our healthcare systems paid the AMA more than $300 million just to use those CPT codes.
Those costs don't disappear. Healthcare providers, and insurers, and employers pass them on to their patients. Every American pays the price.
- Washington created a system that put special interests ahead of the American people.
- President Trump is changing all of that.
- Now we need your help.
Visit the Federal Register, or click the link on this video's caption, and tell us how we can build a simpler, more transparent, and more affordable medical billing system.
We're cutting red tape. We're breaking the grip of special interests.
And we're putting money back into Americans' pockets.
That's how we make America healthy and affordable again. Thank you.