Characteristics of Federal Political Contributions of Self-Identified Radiologists Across the United States

As federal legislation increasingly influences health care delivery, the impact of election funding has grown. We aimed to characterize US radiologist federal political contributions over recent years.

After obtaining 2003 to 2016 finance data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), we extracted contribution data for all self-identified radiologists. Contributions were classified by recipient group and FEC-designated political party and then analyzed temporally and geographically, in aggregate, and by individual radiologist.

Between 2003 and 2016, the FEC reported 35,408,584 political contributions. Of these, 36,474 (totaling $16,255,099) were from 7,515 unique self-identified radiologists. Total annual radiologist contributions ranged from $480,565 in 2005 to $1,867,120 in 2012. On average, 1,697 radiologists made political contributions each year (range 903 in 2005 to 2,496 in 2016). On average, contributing radiologists gave $2,163 ± $4,053 (range $10-$121,836) over this time, but amounts varied considerably by state (range $865 in Utah to $4,325 in Arkansas). Of all radiologist dollars, 76.3% were nonpartisan, with only 14.8% to Republicans, 8.5% to Democrats, and 0.4% to others. Most radiologist dollars went to political action committees (PACs) rather than candidates (74.6% versus 25.4%). Those PAC dollars were overwhelmingly (92.5%) directed to the Radiology Political Action Committee (RADPAC), which saw self-identified radiologist contributions grow from $351,251 in 2003 to $1,113,966 in 2016.

Radiologist federal political contributions have increased over 3-fold in recent years. That growth overwhelmingly represents contributions to RADPAC. Despite national political polarization, the overwhelming majority of radiologist political contributions are specialty-focused and nonpartisan.