Kennedy asks the public to weigh in on the AMA's control of CPT codes by Sept. 14

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a video Aug. 27 directing Americans to the Federal Register to comment on the future of medical coding and billing, saying organizations across the health care system paid the American Medical Association (AMA) more than $300 million last year to use Current Procedural Terminology codes.

“Those costs don’t disappear,” Kennedy said. “Health care providers and insurers and employers pass them on to their patients. Every American pays the price.”

The AMA says its licensing fees pay for creating and maintaining the code set. CPT is the backbone of health data interoperability in the United States, the association said when it released the 2026 codes, and without a common language patients’ access to care would be undermined and the movement of health information disrupted.

The docket Kennedy pointed to is the CY 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule, file code CMS-1848-P. Comments close Sept. 14. The docket had drawn more than 19,000 submissions as of Aug. 31.

The video (above), which was shared on the official HHS YouTube channel, as well as on the MAHA Action account on X, formerly Twitter, directs viewers to the Federal Register.

What CMS asked

The CPT request for information sits at section II.H of the 716-page rule. CMS asks commenters to identify harms or challenges tied to AMA licensing of CPT-4, and improvements to patient care the arrangement may have delayed, including the cost of licensure. It asks whether private competition could supplement the standard, what alternatives exist to the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee and whether ICD-10-PCS could serve as a basis for paying physicians.

CMS cited “longstanding concern expressed over the Federal reliance on a private organization with such an obvious conflict of interest” in the rule.

An RFI is not a proposal. CMS has set no timeline and is under no obligation to act on what comes in. The same rule leans on the association heavily, proposing to accept close to 100% of the AMA’s direct practice expense recommendations for 2027.

The claims and the record

“Decades ago, Congress gave the AMA a de facto monopoly over these codes,” Kennedy said in the video.

CMS mandated CPT for Medicare Part B billing in 1983 and for state Medicaid programs in 1986. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, passed in 1996, established the code set as the national standard for physician and provider billing.

Kennedy also said about 20% of American physicians belong to the AMA. Independent tallies have put membership below a quarter of the nation’s active physicians. The AMA describes itself as the largest association of physicians and medical students in the country and says that scale is what allows it to convene the editorial process.

What the license costs

CPT license fees run $18.50 per year for each user, AMA CEO John Whyte, M.D., wrote to Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D., R-Louisiana, on Oct. 23, 2025, responding to a letter Cassidy sent then-AMA president Bobby Mukkamala, M.D., on Oct. 6. Health plans pay 24 cents per member per year. Whyte rejected the characterization that the fees are exorbitant or that they raise health care costs.

Providers also pay an annual fee of $82.50 for access, and a physical copy of the code set costs $137.89. Estimates of what CPT licensing brings in run around $300 million a year, the figure Kennedy cited, though the AMA does not report it as a separate line.

Royalties and credentialing products, the budget category that contains licensing, brought in $326 million in 2024.

Most physicians never see an invoice from the AMA. SimplePractice, one electronic health record company, passes through an annual AMA fee of $20 per clinician.

The CPT Editorial Panel costs the government nothing, Whyte wrote. Twelve of its 21 members are appointed by national medical specialty organizations, CMS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration each hold a non-voting liaison seat, meetings are open to any stakeholder, and advisers from more than 100 societies feed into the process.

The lawsuit

PatientRightsAdvocate.org sued the AMA in Illinois federal court in mid-August, asking a judge to invalidate the CPT copyrights so the group can scan and publish the 2026 code set free in searchable form.

Federal and state law incorporate CPT by reference, the complaint argues, and copyright precedent holds that no one can own the law. The claims are untested.

An AMA spokesman told MedPage Today the association will vigorously defend its intellectual property rights, calling CPT medicine’s uniform language and its updating process open and transparent. The association has not responded publicly to Kennedy’s video.

The money in the same rule

Both 2027 conversion factors decline under the proposal, from $33.57 in 2026 to $33.17 for qualifying alternative payment model participants and $32.84 for everyone else, cuts of 1.19% and 1.68%.

Projected specialty impacts run in both directions, with increases of 12% for clinical social work and 11% for clinical psychology against decreases of 9% for dermatology and otolaryngology and 7% for orthopedic surgery.

Comments go to regulations.gov under docket CMS-2026-2377, file code CMS-1848-P, by Sept. 14.