FTC Judge Says Medical Association Must Allow Its Doctors To Advertise

WASHINGTON--The American Medical Association (AMA) has contributed to an illegal price-fixing conspiracy by prohibiting doctors from advertising, a Federal Trade Commission judge ruled yesterday.

Judge Ernest Q. Barnes ordered the AMA, the largest professional organization in the world, to rescind its rules keeping physicians from advertising or soliciting patients.

The AMA's policy, which prohibits doctors from advertising for patients, originally adopted to prevent medical quackery, has become a means of insuring physicians' profits, Barnes said.

The rules prevent doctors from giving patients information on alternative health services, Barnes said.

"The costs to the public in terms of less expensive or even, perhaps, more improved forms of medical services are great," he added.

Decision Not Final

The five-member Federal Trade Commission must review Barnes' decision before it becomes final. If the decision is approved, the AMA will appeal the decision, a spokesman for the group said.

Robert L. Hunter, chairman of the board of trustees for the AMA, said that the organization favors the free flow of public information about health care services.

"But we are opposed to false and misleading advertising and its adverse impact on the quality of health care available to patients," Hunter said.

Hunter said that the "most shocking and pervasive attack on professionalism" in the ruling is a provision which requires the AMA to obtain FTC approval in setting ethical guidelines for doctors' advertising.

"We don't feel that lawyers, dentists, engineers, and other professionals, labor unions, business entities, charitable organizations, state and local governmental agencies should have to ask the federal government if they can issue ethical guidelines to their members," Hunter added.

Barnes's decision follows a series of rulings in recent years that have giver lawyers, engineers, druggists and optometrists the right to advertise. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1977 to allow lawyers to advertise has led to the development of numerous low-cost legal clinics.