Ad Campaign Targets GME Funding Threat

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has launched an advertising campaign to urge support for preserving federal funding for graduate medical education (GME) and medical research.

The campaign is a response to the beginning of the work of the so-called "super committee," the congressional panel that was created by the August agreement forged after the debate about raising the nation's debt ceiling. The panel is charged with coming up with proposals to decrease the federal deficit, and government support for GME and research through the Medicare program is considered highly vulnerable.

A study commissioned by the AAMC and released in July found that proposed cuts to federal support for major teaching hospitals would result in a loss of nearly 73,000 full-time jobs and $654 million in local and state revenue. In a letter to President Obama in July, AAMC President Darrell Kirch, M.D., said that reductions in Medicare's support for GME proposed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform would threaten the training of doctors even as a severe shortage of physicians is being predicted for coming years. (The commission was appointed by President Obama and issued a report, "The Moment of Truth," in December 2010.)

In addition to running print ads in publications appearing in the Washington, D.C., area, a new radio ad began airing during drive-time hours in the Washington metropolitan area.