The American Medical Association (AMA), the powerful trade group representing over 283,000 physicians nationwide, has leveraged hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty income generated from its government-mandated medical coding monopoly for left-leaning causes.
The AMA’s cache of cash has gone toward advocacy and litigation spanning climate change, COVID-era mandates, housing policy, immigration, and transgender issues, according to tax records and court filings reviewed by the Washington Reporter.
In 2023, the AMA earned over $284 million in royalties from the licensing of its proprietary Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set, making up a large share of its total $468 million in revenue.
The AMA’s CPT codes are embedded in nearly every health insurance billing system in the United States. Their use is mandated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and widely adopted across the private insurance market, requiring virtually all health systems, insurers, and providers to pay licensing fees.
This quasi-governmental authority over a foundational element of healthcare administration has created a lucrative and largely unregulated revenue stream.
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