I think the AMA fufills a very useful mission, so I'm not flaming anti-AMA but I do question some of the "theories" that go around about AMA and I do and should question the leadership. Heck, it's my organization! I not only have a right but an obligation to have input. I particularly don't like the national flying site, but that's just my opinion. I think the money could have been spent in better ways.

Below are the facts, as extracted from the 2000/2001 financial statements on their our website. Check them out for yourself.

The AMA spent about $540K in 2001 for membership insurance (Page 15) and spend about $300K annually on claims, according to the 21 month history posted earlier in this thread. The membership dues is about $6.448M annually (Page 3), so AMA has about 160,000 members, give or take. Insurance/claims are 13% of annual membership revenues. Now, if those expenses doubled, to $1.68M annually, the dues increase per member should be about $10. So if you believe that insurance and claims doubled, the dues hike was in the ballpark.

The only issue I have is that I can't see the claims expenses in the financial statements. (They may be masked in accounts like professional services and that would not be unusual for any entity to do) On the other hand, they may be included in the "Insurance" category, in which case, the total of claims and insurance is $540K, not $840K). In the latter case, the dues hike should be in the order of $5 annually.

The 2002 financials will be out in a few months. It will be interesting to see them and see how we did financially and how much of the $8.2M in cash we used.

Bob