Political Campaign Contributions of Surgeons in the United States Throughout the 2020 Election Cycle

Abstract

Importance: Political engagement by the physician workforce is necessary to ensure continued representation of their interests in health care legislation. Limited data are available pertaining to the political involvement of US surgeons. Objective: To analyze the magnitude and distribution of political donations made by all US surgeons throughout the 2020 election cycle. Design, Setting, and Participants: Partisan and geographical differences in surgeon contributions by aggregating data (January 1 through December 31, 2020) from the US Federal Election Commission database were analyzed. Contributions were labeled as Republican, Democrat, or independent depending on the committee they were designated to. Main Outcomes and Measures: Differences in contributions to Republicans, Democrats, and independent candidates for all US surgeons and for subgroups. Results: For the 2020 election year, a total of 53944 donations were made by surgeons in the United States, amounting to 9223350.68. Among all surgical specialties, the top 5 highest number of contributions were made from orthopedic surgeons (n = 15081), ophthalmic surgeons (n = 14836), neurological surgeons (n = 7481), urologists (n = 4544), and plastic surgeons (n = 4060). Of these donations, 59.46% (n = 32107) were made to the Republican party (5420326), 30.83% (n = 16644) were made to the Democratic party (1612775), and 9.71% (n = 5243) were made to nonpartisan (ie, independent) organizations (2190250). Overall, pediatric surgeons reported the lowest mean contribution amount of 59.43, whereas thoracic surgeons reported the highest mean contribution amount of 225.19. Conclusions and Relevance: Health care legislation has an immense impact on how medicine is practiced and utilized. This analysis reveals a high degree of political activity of surgeons across different specialties and geographic regions.