In today’s National Review Online is a feature article “Conflicting Interests” outlining the close agenda that the Macy Foundation has with the Institute of Medicine, AAMC and others on their conflict of interest reports and other upcoming reports to rid medical education of ties with the private sector.
The Macy Foundation is funneling millions of dollars in “donations” to legitimize their CME report.
The Institute of Medicine and the Macy Foundation are part of a coterie of bureaucrats and journal editors who hold the anachronistic view that the healing arts are above the simple business of the world.
For those who think all this “bad news” is a coincidence, it is worth while reading.
National Review: Conflicting Interests
Wow. I think that all of this ‘improvement’ is a conflict of interest if it is being directed and financed by medical manged care and insurance companies. All of this “improvement” malarkey started with Kaiser, HCA, Frist and the flag is now carried by Dodd ,Grassley and Berwick. Dan Berwick’s son, Ben, works as a staffer for Dodd, with a focus on health care. There has been a formal effort by the banking industry (think insurance companies and managed care) to take over continuing medical education for decades and to possess greater control of all things medical. It is the same players all sleeping in the same big global banking bed. Lots of lobbies, money to be had, lots of special interest, foreign interest, and agendas to be hawked. This new model of educational support will be worse than big pharma grant-supported CME because the insurance companies call all the shots in health care not only the pharmacologic decision-making. Wake up everyone and read between the lines. This is a hijacking in progress. Just look on the IHI web site to see who is grant-supporting the IHI School. Big bucks from insurance companies and the Macy Foundation (yet another non profit arm of the original Frist team). It all sounds so innocent…a nice NONPROFIT! haha..it is anything BUT! Write to your government representatives and tell them you don’t want insurance companies teaching physicians how to practice medicine, even if they are behind the scenes of a innocuous non profit sounding organization. What a crock! It is the wolf in sheep’s clothing to be sure.