Many of the physicians who serve as president of the AMA start their one-year term in office with a list of priorities. Bobby Mukkamala, MD, who was inaugurated as AMA president in June, says he is on a mission to help improve the nation’s health system by, among other critical steps, lowering doctor burnout, streamlining prior authorization and growing the physician workforce.
Dr. Mukkamala said this mission is now intertwined with his own story of discovering in November that he had cancer, having a tumor removed from his brain in December, and being “forever changed” by the experience.
“It’s had a profound impact on me and shifted the way that I look at health care in this country, and the needs of our patients,” Dr. Mukkamala told reporters at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists 2025 Conference & Expo held recently in Chicago.
The operation lasted about 13 hours and 90% of the cancer was removed. The remaining 10% is being held at bay by a new drug—an isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) inhibitor—that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for use only four months before Dr. Mukkamala needed it.
“The last seven months have been this journey of revelation, a transformation of understanding about equity,” he added.
Called to action
Dr. Mukkamala said that, because he was president-elect of the AMA at the time, his diagnosis, consultations with leading neurosurgeons, and his surgery and treatment were all initiated in a matter of weeks. He speculated that many of his patients in Flint, however, would still be undiagnosed and waiting for their magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.
The experience has served as both a wake-up call and a call to action.
“I have the means, I have the access and I'm lucky to the point of almost feeling guilty about the opportunities and the quality of care that I've received relative to these neighbors on either side of my home,” he added. “But the question that comes up in my mind is: Shouldn't everyone have the right to have this kind of access?
“But then I think the reason is that, here I am as president of the American Medical Association—being a voice for patient care, from a physician's perspective—at the exact same time that the very process that created this pill that I take is now at huge risk,” he said.
The experience “has ignited a desire to tell this story, and to use this platform to basically ensure that more patients get the access that they need and the care that they deserve.”
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Connecting with patients—as a patient
He added that he has told his story multiple times to physicians, residents and medical students, but there is now a new group that he shares it with: His fellow brain-tumor survivors.
Dr. Mukkamala said he recently had a conversation in Detroit with an entire room of brain-tumor patients and their families.
“At the end, everybody was bawling, but honestly, they were tears of happiness because we are alive and we see each other,” he said. “That's my plan with this role: To make sure that those stories get told and use them as the reason to change health care.”
Dr. Mukkamala told the journalists that they are “best equipped” to share these stories at the ground level where he thinks “it makes the most difference.”
After his remarks, Dr. Mukkamala took questions from CNBC reporter Bertha Coombs, who asked him about the cut in Medicaid spending that was recently enacted as part of the budget-reconciliation package.
He described the law as a deeply disappointing setback for patients and physicians, adding that he hoped journalists and patients will be able to educate lawmakers on the consequences of those cuts.
Coombs also asked about the recent pledge from insurance companies to make prior authorization easier and more automatic and added that “they’ve actually said that they’ve been doing it now for a year.”
“If they said they've been doing it for a year and it's changed, somebody didn't tell my office that,” said Dr. Mukkamala, who wrote earlier this month that action must follow pledges on prior authorization.
He added that the office he shares with his wife—ob-gyn Nita Kulkarni, MD—has a full-time employee who does nothing but process prior authorizations.
Learn how the AMA is fighting to fix prior authorization by challenging insurance companies to eliminate care delays, patient harms and practice hassles.
