American Medical Association President Nancy Nielsen last week during her inauguration speech at the annual meeting of the group promised to use "all of the power" of her position and the group "to let the nation know that we must cover America's uninsured," the Chicago Tribune reports.

According to the Tribune, Nielsen, only the second female president of AMA, will serve until next June during an "intense political year when health coverage is front and center," and, in "pressing for coverage for the uninsured, doctors expect that she will have a less adversarial relationship with the health insurance industry than her predecessors" because of her background. Nielsen, who has served as a primary care physician for more than 20 years, until last year served as chief medical officer for Independent Health and currently serves as the senior associate dean at the State University of New York-Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Physicians also maintain that her background provides Nielsen with experience on the development of report cards used by health insurers to rate physicians on quality and patient safety measures. Nielsen said that she supports such report cards, although she wants physicians to have a larger role in their development. She said, "To be fair, some health plans have been fairly innovative and collaborative" in the development of such report cards, adding, "But it's time for all of them to be" (Japsen, Chicago Tribune, 6/22).

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