THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The choice by Donald Trump of Rep. Tom "Dr. Death" Price, an erstwhile doctor, for head of Health and Human Services has caused a division among doctors between those who believe medicine should heal and oppose his choice and doctors who believe medicine should make doctors rich and approve of his choice.

Mr. Trump and a Republican-held Congress are considering some of the biggest changes to the American health care system in generations: not only the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which is providing insurance to some 20 million people, but also the transformation of Medicare, for older Americans, and Medicaid, for low-income people. Mr. Price has favored those changes.

Seven years ago, the A.M.A.’s support helped lift President Obama’s health care proposals toward passage, and the group has backed the law, with some reservations, since its adoption in 2010. But as Republicans push for its dismantlement, deep disagreements within the A.M.A., which has long wielded tremendous power in Washington, could lessen its influence.

The concerns voiced by dissident doctors do not appear to imperil Senate confirmation of Mr. Price, but they do ensure that his confirmation hearings next month will be as contentious as any held for a Trump nominee, featuring a full public examination of the new president’s proposed health policies.

“Doctors are divided big time,” said Dr. Carl G. Streed Jr., a primary care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a member of the A.M.A. house of delegates, the organization’s principal policy-making body.

The controversy began soon after Mr. Trump announced on Nov. 29 that he had chosen Mr. Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which controls Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act’s federal health insurance exchange, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Within hours, the A.M.A. — the nation’s largest medical advocacy group, which has nearly 235,000 members and calls itself “the voice of the medical profession” — issued a statement saying it “strongly supports” the selection.

It noted Mr. Price’s experience as a doctor, a state legislator and a member of Congress. It praised, in particular, his support for “patient choice and market-based solutions” and his efforts to reduce “excessive regulatory burdens” on doctors.

The argument will be fierce and long lived because when you stop looking at patients as humans, they quickly become either cost centers or profit centers and whichever your doctor chooses illuminates his position.