In the Oath of Hippocrates, physicians promise to work for the good of their patients, according to the best of their ability and judgment, and to do no harm. AAPS members support a return to this ethic in American medicine, and oppose programs and laws that harm patients by subjugating their care to the interest of the government and third parties.
Reform Issues:
- Access to care is restricted because of burdensome regulations and mandates.
- Fraud and waste is rampant because of third-party payment.
- Employer-based insurance discourages rational insurance practices.
- Regulations are stifling innovation and raising costs.
- Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the federal government, states, and doctors.
Proposed Solutions:
- Fully Repeal ObamaCare
- Promote private medicine, with direct patient payment of physicians
- Preserves the patient-physician relationship
- Increases access to care
- Relieves fiscal burden on Medicare and regulatory burden on physicians.
- Drastically cuts administrative overhead
- Eliminate third party payments to physicians; the patient is responsible for payment
- Block Grant Medicaid as it is phased out
- Returns control and taxpayers’ money to the states
- Encourages state innovation and competition
- Replace price controls with price competition
- Results in value-based price determined by recipient and provider of service
- Restores insurance as risk-sharing rather than prepayment mechanism
- Creates more transparent pricing and honest accounting
- Reform tax code to eliminate discrimination against individually owned policies and direct payment
- Lower barriers for life-saving treatments by establishing private mechanisms for drug certification, with fully informed consent
- Remove barriers to market entry
- Protect patients by not entering information on a networked database except with patient consent
- Protect physicians and staff against discrimination for declining participation in procedures that violate their conscience.
- Assure due process protections for physicians in administrative proceedings
- Clarify that a service is “covered” by Medicare only if patient and physician agree to file a Medicare claim
Conclusion:
Congress has passed law after law that disrupts the patient-physician relationship, corrupts medical decision making, and increases costs. AAPS members believe that harmful laws cannot be fixed by adding new regulatory burdens. True reform starts with repealing laws and correcting errors, restoring the freedom, under constitutionally limited government, that made America great.
