They lobby for _some_ doctors' interests, but from what my colleagues tell me, only about 1/3 of docs are members, and even among those, they disagree with much of what AMA lobbies for or against.
Regardless, it seems to me that the AMA isn't a union any more than EAA or AOPA are unions (don't all three of these alphabet groups lobby for their members? Don't nearly all alphabet groups lobby for the interests of their members?).
As to the original comment that brought unions into this at all, seems like a stretch, especially given the nice history lesson Frank Giger gave us. I knew about Quesada, but had no idea about the earlier ploy of getting pilot health and contact information into a database. I guess there's nothing new under the sun.
I attended the FAA Administrator Town Hall at Air Venture. Mr. Pelton was the MC. Mr. Huerta kept saying "We all know where we want to get to". And then he said "We want to find a way to say YES". So my question which never got asked either by Mr. Pelton or the audience and the questions were cut off after only a few minutes after a hours of speeches. What is the FAA Administrators idea of "Where we want to get to". For me it is very simple and should not take a major POLICY change as he describes.
Here is all the NPRM should be.
1. Reference 61.23 a3 Deleted
2 Add 61.23.b10. Exercising the Privileges of Private Pilot.
3.. Duration chart "Delete third class medical"
The FAA Administrator said his staff has been working since January on the NPRM. I did it in less than 5 minutes.
My goal is the elimination of Third Class Medical Period. Does not need to be there and the government cost to administer and more importantly the individual cost on each application.
AOPA and EAA blew it when they tried to take a baby step 2 years ago. Now with all the wasted time. It is time to get the GOAL done.
How would the elimination of the Third Class change GA?
The elimination of the third class medical,will go a long way to creating new pilots and keeping older ones. Flying is not inexpensive ,and with the threat of loosing your medical,a lot of people don't want to make the investment.