AMA wary of Obama health plans

If President Barack Obama wants to win U.S. doctors' support for his plans to expand medical coverage to more than 46 million uninsured Americans, he may need to hike physicians' pay from Medicare and install liability reform. Obama will soon address the American Medical Association, and the group's president, Nancy Nielsen, MD, sounded an aggressive call for changes that doctors say are long overdue. Among the AMA's key wants are increased payments from Medicare and medical liability reform that caps non-economic damages and allows doctors to abide by the coming trend of quality measures that pay physicians based on performance without being penalized for mistakes.