At the American Medical Association’s annual meeting …, members of the group’s House of Delegates are sending a clear message to their leaders: Call out Kennedy, even if it costs us in the pocketbook.
That message was stated most clearly in the election of Sandra Fryhofer, an internist from Atlanta and uncompromising Kennedy critic, as AMA president-elect. She beat Michael Suk, who as AMA board chair in 2024 and 2025 prioritized doctors’ Medicare fees and promised continued pragmatism in dealing with Kennedy.
Fryhofer, who advised the vaccine committee whose members Kennedy fired last year, suggested that would be an abdication of doctors’ moral duty.
“Measles running rampant, public health destroyed, a trillion dollars ripped from Medicaid, inadequate physician payment, stupid immigration rules,” Fryhofer told AMA members ….
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The AMA’s pragmatists will have an interregnum to try to make the case for continued diplomacy.
Fryhofer, who called Kennedy the “anti-vax HHS secretary” and lamented that the AMA didn’t try to block his confirmation, won’t begin her term until next summer.
