Medical care is a professional service, not a right. Rights (as to life, liberty, and property) may be defended by force, if necessary. Professional services are subject to economic laws, such as supply and demand, and are not properly procured by force.
Physicians are professionals. Professionals are agents of their patients or clients, not of corporations, government, insurers, or other entities. Professionals act according to their own best judgment, not government “guidelines,” which soon become mandates. Physicians’ decisions and procedures cannot be dictated by overseers without destroying their professionalism.
Third-party payment introduces conflicts of interest. Physicians are best paid directly by the recipients of their services. The insurer’s contract should be only with subscribers, not with physicians. Patients should pay their physician a mutually agreed-upon fee; the insurer should reimburse the subscriber according to the terms of the contract.
Government regulations reduce access to care. Barriers to market entry, and regulations that impose costs and burdens on the provision of care need to be greatly reduced. Examples include insurance mandates, certificate of need, translation requirements, CLIA regulation of physician office laboratories, HIPAA requirements, FDA restrictions on freedom of speech and physicians’ judgment, etc.
Honest, publicly accessible pricing and accounting (“transparency”) is essential to controlling costs and optimizing access. Government and other third-party payment or price-fixing obscures the true value of a service, which can only be determined by a buyer’s willingness to pay. The resulting misallocation of resources creates both waste and unavailability of services.
Confidentiality is essential to good medical care. Trust is the foundation of the patient-physician relationship. Patient confidences should be preserved; information should be released only upon patient informed consent, with rare exceptions determined by law and related to credible immediate threats to the safety or health of others.
Physicians should be treated fairly in licensure, peer review, and other proceedings. Physicians should not fear loss of their livelihood or burdensome legal expenses because of baseless accusations, competitors’ malice, hospitals’ attempts to silence dissent, or refusal to violate their consciences. They should be accorded both procedural and substantive due process. They do not lose the basic rights enjoyed by Americans simply because of their vocation.
Medical insurance should be voluntary. While everyone has the responsibility to pay for goods and services he uses, insurance is not the only or best way to finance medical care. It greatly increases costs and expenditures. The right to decline to buy a product is the ultimate and necessary protection against low quality, overpriced offerings by monopolistic providers.
Coverage is not care. Health plans deny payment and ration care. Their promises are often broken. The only reliable protection against serious shortages and deterioration of quality is the right of patients to use their own money to buy the care of their choice.