ORIGINAL: Mike in DC
All I know is that I have seen the AMA insurance work very effectively and as advertised in enough situations that I believe that most of the fear mongering that I see is based on ill-informed opinions and outright misinformation.
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I think a lot has to do with the fact that the details of every claim are not openly published and some take that to mean that there is something to hide.
I agree with both of the above. In addition, I think a lot of the paranoia surrounds the intentional vagueness of the following statement: "Failure to comply with the AMA Safety Code may endanger insurance coverage." Lots of people are not comfortable with vague statements. Couple that with the nature of the Internet where mis-information can be very difficult to correct and the lack of skills at the AMA for handling Internet brush fires, and you can predict that these little flare-ups of paranoia will be with us for a long time.
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Mike-
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the only hammer AMA has to enforce their policies is threat of voiding insurance coverage and that tool has been much abused, to the detriment of member trust. DB took upon himself the task of determining how AMA should discipline members within the last two years (not going dig through EC minutes to find ref to that - it's there for anyone that wants to do the digging).
AFAIK, nothing has come of it.
Abel