When, in 2009, the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform bill, many Americans probably assumed that most physicians therefore backed the legislation. In fact, that was not the case at all.

Regular readers of The New American are undoubtedly aware of The John Birch Society’s Choose Freedom — Stop ObamaCare tour last fall, which featured physicians opposed to the recent federal takeover of medicine. (See, for example, “Doctors for Freedom” in the October 11, 2010 issue.) However, the doctors participating in the Birch Society’s tour are far from alone; they are joined in the fight by many other doctors’ groups, some of which were formed explicitly to oppose ObamaCare. TNA recently interviewed the leaders of three of these organizations: Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS); Dr. Hal Scherz, founder and president of Docs4PatientCare; and Dr. Adam Dorin, founder of Physicians Against Obamacare.

Doctors Going Against the Grain

The AAPS is by far the oldest of these organizations. Founded in 1943 to oppose the federal government’s first attempt to nationalize healthcare, the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill (named after its sponsors, Sen. Robert Wagner of New York, Sen. James Murray of Montana, and Rep. John Dingell, Sr. of Michigan, all Democrats), the AAPS has been a consistent, principled opponent of government intrusions into medicine ever since. It opposed Medicare and Medicaid from the outset and, in 1993, sued then-First Lady Hil­lary Clinton and other federal officials for their secrecy surrounding the healthcare task force that came up with Clinton’s legislation to create a single-payer national health-insurance scheme. (A federal judge found in favor of the plaintiffs, only to be overturned on appeal.) The group later participated in lawsuits against various provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 and on May 25, 2010, became the first organization of healthcare providers to file suit against ObamaCare.

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