December 10, 2024
Since 1853, the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA), the state’s oldest and largest professional association for physicians and physicians-in-training, has worked to improve the health of Minnesotans and to support physicians in their delivery of high-quality medical care. Over the past 171 years our work has been seriously tested – by wars, social unrest, economic hardships, technology, healthcare market changes, pandemics (yes, plural!), and political volatility, to name a few.
Over the past several weeks, we have heard from many of you that the incoming presidential administration may pose new and unique challenges and, potentially, serious threats to the health of the public and to the practice of medicine. As a nonpartisan organization dedicated to making Minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice medicine, we offer no specific comment on the president-elect. Rather, we write this message to remind you, and to assure you, that the MMA’s commitment to the principles of science, evidence, integrity, and inclusion are unwavering. We also write to reiterate, in brief, several key policies and principles, informed and developed by MMA members and adopted by the Board of Trustees, that we expect to lean into in the coming months and years:
- The MMA supports universal and affordable insurance coverage for all.
- Although improvements are needed, the MMA opposes the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
- Investments in national, state, and local public health systems are critical to preserving and improving health.
- Vaccinations save lives and exemptions from vaccines should be limited to medical contraindications only.
- The MMA supports access to care for all Minnesotans regardless of immigration status and opposes any policies that would criminalize or punish physicians for giving medical care to patients who are undocumented immigrants. The MMA further opposes any policies requiring physicians and other healthcare providers to collect and report data regarding an individual patient’s legal resident status and opposes proof of citizenship as a condition of providing healthcare.
- The MMA is committed to health equity and recognizes the contribution of structural racism to current disparities in health outcomes and access to care.
- The MMA recognizes abortion as an essential component of reproductive healthcare and as a medical decision to be made between a patient and their physician.
- The MMA supports the right to gender-affirming healthcare (i.e., treatment of clinically diagnosed gender dysphoria/incongruence, including, but not limited to, counseling, psychotherapy, pubertal suppression therapy, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries) as a component of comprehensive healthcare. The MMA also opposes laws and regulatory actions designed to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare, including, but not limited to: 1) government-based civil or criminal penalties imposed on people who seek, obtain, provide, or otherwise facilitate gender-affirming healthcare; and 2) state cooperation with out-of-state subpoenas, warrants, and investigations related to out-of-state civil or criminal penalties imposed on people who seek, obtain, provide, or otherwise facilitate gender-affirming healthcare.
- The MMA concurs with the scientific consensus that climate change is causing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant. Climate changes will create conditions that affect public health, with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, and the poor.
- Firearm-related deaths and injuries are a public health crisis and more needs to be done to reduce suicides and other morbidity and mortality associated with firearms.
- Regulatory relief is needed, particularly regulations that interfere with the patient-physician relationship and that contribute to physician burnout.
As demonstrated by this brief list, the MMA has clear and robust policies that guide our work and inform our advocacy. The Board of Trustees will continue to advance the MMA’s strategic plan and, as it always has, the MMA will adapt to meet new challenges and opportunities. As physicians continue to deliver high-quality, evidence-based medical care, so too will MMA continue to support the physicians who provide this care and to advocate for evidence-based public policy.
To those of you who are members of the MMA community of physicians, thank you! To those of you who are not yet members, please join us to raise your voice in support of our important collective work to protect and improve medicine and patient health in Minnesota.
Edwin Bogonko, MD, MBA
MMA President
Kimberly Tjaden, MD, MPH
Chair, MMA Board of Trustees
Janet Silversmith
MMA CEO
Have a comment/thought on this? Send us an email. We'll add it here to share with your peers. Thanks.
FEEDBACK:
Thank you for promoting healthcare policies with equity and empathy. - Carol Lietzau, MD
Great message. Nicely done. Thank you. - Robert Hyde, MD, MA
Way to go MMA…affirming your woke capture. Can’t believe you can’t think beyond the immediate culture war bias or follow the science. No wonder the membership is so meager and uniform. - Daniel Freking, MD
Wow, your email made me proud to be a physician in Minnesota. Thank you for speaking out. - Bill Manahan, MD
I am so grateful that the MMA is behind the list of positions that you included in this letter. I hope we can enlist more physicians to support MMA. I know that together we can do more than we can individually! - Dawn Ellison, MD
Thank you for stating these principles clearly.- Mark Brakke, MD
I just read the Insights as a response to our current political times. Thank you for that! Although we cannot predict the future, we do know where the MMA stands and where it will take action. It demonstrates that for many years MMA and its members are committed to the highest ethical standards and that MMA will continue its work to ensure a healthy population and a diverse robust healthcare workforce. Onward!! - Keith Stelter, MD
Since you invited comments on this message, I am responding to give some feedback. As a retired physician and a former active member of the MMA, I have a vested interest in the priorities of this organization, and agree that it is important to work together to promote the health of the people of Minnesota. However, I disagree with several points made here, two of them being critical: 1) the idea that abortion is an essential component of reproductive healthcare, and 2) the practice of “gender-affirming” healthcare, as characterized here. To speak briefly to the first point, I would ask, when did we dispense with the “first do no harm” dictum that was ingrained in us during our years of training? It seems to me that taking the life of an unborn child is doing great harm, and yet U.S. health care professionals repeat this act over a million times a year! The second point relates to “gender-affirming” healthcare – a misnomer, I believe, especially when it refers to transgender methods of care, such as pubertal suppression and transgender surgeries. These procedures do not affirm the gender that a person is assigned genetically at conception, and may carry significant safety risks, which our European colleagues have recognized. In fact, I just read this morning that the UK voted to protect minors from puberty blockers due to expert advice regarding unacceptable safety risks. It is time we followed suit! I am concerned that, were you to poll Minnesota physicians, your December 10th statement would not receive overwhelming support; further, some of its recommendations have strong potential to do harm instead of good. Thank you for listening. - Dwenda Gjerdingen, MD, MS
I wanted to provide some feedback about the recent news story from the MMA in response to the incoming presidential administration. The article states that the MMA is non-partisan while at the same time mentioned language that is clearly partisan mentioning that the new presidential administration poses a potential “serious” threat to public health and the practice of medicine. This concern is completely unsubstantiated and implies that somehow the incoming administration is going to ruin healthcare as we know it and will not be making decisions based on science and evidence. This article is inflammatory and clearly reveals how “political” and “partisan” the MMA has become. The majority of the bulleted listed items are politically charged and have little to do with advocating for the physicians the MMA represents. Minnesota physicians are overwhelmed with administrative duties, long hours with an excess of clinical duties for the time provided and burned out. Our advocacy organization allocates one bulleted point for the physicians—the very last one. The physician advocacy comes after climate change, support for gender reassignment and abortion for all. I can honestly say that when I read this article, I realized that the MMA does NOT represent me as a physician and is no longer an advocacy organization for physicians in Minnesota. I hope that the board will thoughtfully consider my concerns. - Karen Mauck, MD