Doctors are demanding that the American Medical Association step up and take a true offensive posture against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
According to Politico, "members of the group’s House of Delegates are sending a clear message to their leaders: Call out Kennedy, even if it costs us in the pocketbook," and spoke up intensely at the AMA annual meeting.
Since Trump took office, the AMA has offered some criticism of Kennedy as he dismantles vaccine approval bodies and fails to act in the face of deadly disease outbreaks around the world — but the group has balanced this with praise of his stated mission to encourage Americans to live healthier lifestyles, as laid out in the controversial Make America Healthy Again movement.
However, said the report, this is likely to change due to "the election of Sandra Fryhofer, an internist from Atlanta and uncompromising Kennedy critic, as AMA president-elect. She beat Michael Suk, who as AMA board chair in 2024 and 2025 prioritized doctors’ Medicare fees and promised continued pragmatism in dealing with Kennedy."
Fryhofer has pledged to take a more aggressive posture, vowing to hold the administration accountable for “measles running rampant, public health destroyed, a trillion dollars ripped from Medicaid, inadequate physician payment, [and] stupid immigration rules.”
Speaking to Politico in interviews, "AMA doctors described an advocacy organization at its wit’s end with Kennedy ... Long a Republican-leaning constituency, doctors began shifting left during the battles over managed care three decades ago." For several holdouts, the report continued, "President Donald Trump’s alliance with Kennedy, a longtime skeptic of vaccine safety and critic of the medical establishment, was the last straw."
This also comes as Kennedy and his allies have come under increasing criticism for obstructing new potentially lifesaving research under the guise of requiring stricter safety standards in clinical trials.