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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

> What qualifies as a medical error?

If we just classified things that are obvious. Wrong medication applied (ie paper says to deliver 10mg of Advil but you got a vitamin C tablet), wrong leg amputated, wrong patient data looked at leading to a bad diagnosis. We would likely find a large number of incidents, however no way on earth will you get the American medical cartel to report on them honestly.

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Calling doctors, collectively, the "American medical cartel" isn't helpful language. It's just more polarizing politics that breaks down constructive dialogue.

Don't behave like a cartel if you don't want to be called one.

From limiting residency slots, making it nearly impossible to hire foreign doctors and lobbying for safe medications that are sold over the counter in the rest of the world to be sold as prescription only in the US. Just to name a few, the AMA has served it's members well to the detriment of anyone buying healthcare in the United States. That to me is a cartel, they just use a "certificate of need" to enforce it's will rather than a gun.

Anytime someone mentions the AMA I just have to ignore them completely. It’s not that the AMA hasn’t done some shady shit throughout the years (especially the 60s), it’s just that in 2022 they are so close to irrelevant that painting them as a boogieman merely shows that your name information is about 50 years out of date. The “medical cartel” as you call it is more and more getting shaped by a number or powerful interest groups none of which are the AMA that is pushing somewhat successfully for fewer doctors in most specialities.

Amen. The American Hospital Association wields way more power now. Mergers between hospital systems have led to the large hospital systems being among the largest employers in many states, which means that senators and representatives are going to listen to what they want. Certainly more than they do to the AMA, which might only represent like 25% of doctors anymore.

Even if true how does that make medicine less of a cartel?

Please stop spreading misinformation. The AMA doesn't limit residency slots. They have been actively lobbying Congress to increase residency slots, and have even put their own money into it.

https://www.ama-assn.org/education/accelerating-change-medic...

> Launched in June 2019

They were actively lobbying to reduce residency slots as late as 2012. They only started the program you linked to when became common knowledge that they were attempting to limit the number of doctors.

The AMA (and other medical trade groups) lobbied to limit residency slots back in the 90s. We're still feeling the effects of that in the market today.

Rather than copy / paste a comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30108269

Edit: Funny enough I was replying to you back then too. Small world.

I don’t see them referring to doctors as such.

Who do you think is making the majority of these diagnostic errors?

Medical errors are not all diagnostic errors, far from it. All kinds of healthcare workers are involved.

It wasn’t in question who was making them, it’s who would be responsible for reporting them.

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