ABSTRACT

The Association of American Medical Colleges became a second important interest group, especially in the post-World War II years when the federal government started to finance medical research in a big way and put much of its money into the leading academic health centers. The American Medical Association (AMA), for instance, really played the lead role in the reform of American medical education in the early part of this century; also, the AMA was semisupportive of national health insurance between 1916 and 1919. The forecast for 1994–1995 which is only a short time away, is that the United States will reach the $1 trillion expenditure level for medical care. The United States has only a very few years to see whether it can forestall the crisis or whether it will be overtaken by it, and thus be forced to slug it out in the political arena when crisis erupts.