Interest Groups Involved in Health Care

Health Care Interest Groups
Health care interest groups represent a number of different stakeholders in the health care industry. There are interest groups focusing on patients’ rights, groups that center on physicians’ concerns, groups that represent insurance companies, groups that represent pharmaceutical firms, groups that represent families, and so on. There are also groups like Academy Health that facilitate the sharing of information among the various stakeholders by bringing representatives from the various groups together to guide and steer committees towards addressing some of the issues that they face. This paper will describe Academy Health and two other interest groups—the American Medical Association and American Action Network—and provide an analysis of their primary concerns with contemporary U.S. health care.
Academy Health is focused on the area of health services research. Its goal is to identify “what works, for whom, at what cost, and under what circumstances” so that stakeholders in health care can have a better understanding of where the various parties are coming from when they come to the table to negotiate health care issues (Academy Health, 2017). Academy Health’s primary concern with contemporary health care is to bring stakeholders together. That is why the interest group hosts conferences year round, offers programs and fellowships that contribute to the existing field of data available on health care, and works with legislators and health care providers by supplying them with real-world evidence to help provide context for the obstacles that exist in today’s health care environment.
American Medical Association (AMA) is an association of physicians whose mission is to “promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health” (AMA, 2017). The AMA supported Obama’s Affordable Care Act but showed no support for Congress’s recent American Health Care Act, which was written to repeal and replace Obamacare. In a letter to Congressional Republicans, the AMA wrote that while there are problems with the ACA that must be addressed, the ACA has provided coverage to 20 million Americans who would otherwise not have coverage. The AMA is focused on ensuring that the health care legislation currently in place is not totally repealed for fear of disrupting service to millions of Americans who rely on government subsidies in order to obtain treatment.
The American Action Network (AAN) describes itself as a 501(c)(4) “action tank” rather than a “think tank,” because it is focused on creating and promoting “center-right policies based on the principles of freedom, limited government, American exceptionalism, and strong national security” (American Action Network, 2017). Its primary interest in health care has been to push for repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to promote the American Health Care Act (AHCA). To this end, it has spent millions on radio and TV ad campaigns designed to raise awareness on the negative aspects of the ACA and why the AHCA would be good for Americans (“AAN Kicks off $2 Million Nationwide TV Ad Campaign on AHCA,” 2017; “AAN Announces $400,000 Radio Ad Campaign to Thank Lawmakers for Passing AHCA,” 2017). The aim of the AAN is to support action that will allow a more conservative, right-center approach to health care to be adopted by lawmakers in the coming years.
These three interest groups show the range in focus among the various groups engaged in driving health care policies. There are those interested in objective research, like Academy Health—and then there are those interested in the political side of health care—like AAN and the AMA.

References
AAN Announces $400,000 Radio Ad Campaign to Thank Lawmakers for Passing
AHCA. (2017). AAN. Retrieved from https://americanactionnetwork.org/press/aan-announces-400000-radio-ad-campaign-thank-lawmakers-passing-ahca/
AAN Kicks off $2 Million Nationwide TV Ad Campaign on AHCA. (2017). AAN.
Retrieved from https://americanactionnetwork.org/press/american-action-network-kicks-off-2-million-nationwide-tv-ad-campaign-ahca/
Academy Health. (2017). About Academy Health. Retrieved from
http://www.academyhealth.org/node/298
AMA. (2017). About us. Retrieved from https://www.ama-assn.org/about
American Action Network. (2017). About AAN. Retrieved from
https://americanactionnetwork.org/about-aan/