'Times call for anger': Retiring medical leader rips GOP in blistering speech

In his final address as president of the American Medical Association, Kentucky’s Dr. Bruce A. Scott called on the medical community to turn its “anger into action” to protect the medical safety net now under threat in Congress.

Scott, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Louisville, closed out his term as president of the AMA by slamming insurance denials and Republican proposals in Congress that he said threaten the future of medicine.

“The same House bill that brings us closer to finally tying future Medicare payment to the rising cost of running our practices also takes a step backwards by limiting access to care for millions of low income Americans,” Scott said. “Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are literal lifelines for children and families for whom subsidized health coverage is the only real option.”

He added: “We must do all we can to protect the safety net and continue to educate lawmakers on how best to target waste and fraud in a system without making it tougher for vulnerable populations to access care.”

In late May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the controversial spending and tax package, dubbed the “big, beautiful bill” by President Donald Trump who supports the measure. Many health advocates are warning it will hurt hospitals and patients. The bill, which is now in the hands of the Senate, proposes deep cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state program that pays for almost 1 in 3 Kentuckians’ health care.

The AMA is working “to target the Senate as we work for improvements in this bill,” Scott said.

He called for more legislative advocacy, saying that “the times call for some anger” but “we can channel that anger into positive action.”

Among other things, Inside Higher Education reports that the bill could “entirely reshape the student loan system.” This, Scott said during his farewell address to the AMA House of Delegates Friday in Chicago, complicates the future for an already dwindling physician workforce.

The proposed lending practices in the bill would make medical education “virtually unaffordable for many students,” he said, calling that “simply unconscionable.” Kentucky has a well-documented physician shortage. The Kentucky Medical Association reports that most counties don’t have enough primary care providers.

“Our nation should be working to bring down the cost of medical education, not erecting barriers that defer brilliant young minds from pursuing this noble profession,” he said.

Meanwhile, Scott said, “our patience is being tested by this new administration and Congress.”

“Despite all the efforts of everyone in this room and our colleagues across the country, our health care system is failing in fundamental ways. It’s failing physicians and, more importantly, it is failing our patients,” Scott said. “I’m angry because the dysfunction in health care today goes hand in hand with years of dysfunction in Congress. Physicians are bearing the brunt of a failed Medicare payment system, and while our pay has been cut 33% in 25 years, we see hospitals and even insurance companies receiving annual increases. Congress needs to know that there is no ‘care’ in Medicare if there are no doctors.”

In addition to federal policy, Scott criticized insurance companies that deny doctor-recommended care. He said he recently had a patient with a large tumor pushing into her eye that he needed to remove surgically. Her insurance provider initially denied the procedure, recommending “an antibiotic and a steroid nasal spray” first.

“Are you kidding me?” Scott said. “An antibiotic and a nasal spray to treat her tumor? Without seeing the patient, without talking to the patient, without completing even one single semester of medical school, this insurance representative determined that she knew more than the patient’s doctor.”

Such denials lead to confusion and stress for patients, Scott said, and frustration for doctors that eventually “become too much to overcome” and force people to leave the profession.

This, he said, is “a system that is undermining our judgment and eroding our patients’ trust.”

“What insurance companies are doing to our patients is wrong,” Scott said. “Stepping between us and our patients is wrong. Denying necessary and even life saving care is just plain wrong.”

Scott’s term as AMA president ends Tuesday. Michigan’s Dr. Bobby Mukkamala was elected as his successor last year.