Do people realize how much money we could save on healthcare if we would reform the way we license doctors?

[adin55]

Sorry about the length... I promise it is worth the read!

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Besides paying some of the highest prices for health care, we have the dubious distinction of having the most heavily regulated healthcare system in the world. In no other country on earth are doctors and hospitals subjected to as many oversight and enforcement agencies, bureaus and commissions. Rules, regulations, and laws are duplicated, redundant, multiplied, magnified, and contradictory. Laws and regulations covering doctors and hospitals plus all the other parts of our healthcare system now account for over half of all the words, sentences, and paragraphs in our entire body of law.

If regulations could make a healthcare system work better, ours would surely be perfect. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Even those who believe that only government regulation can assure quality health care should face this fact. More laws and regulations are not going to fix our system. If we are truly concerned about the high cost of health care, if we really desire greater safety and higher quality, then we must undertake a dispassionate analysis of the current mess. If we wish to begin effective treatment of our healthcare system, we must first make an accurate diagnosis....

We have to go very far back to the first meeting of what would become the American Medical Association. This meeting was held in New York City in 1846. Twenty-nine allopathic doctors (MDs) attended the meeting. They wanted to establish a monopoly over health care in the United States for those doctors that practiced higher quality medicine, such as themselves. They felt there were too many different kinds of doctors practicing too many questionable forms of medicine. They wanted only doctors that conformed to their brand of medicine to be allowed to practice. They wished to set up their association as a medical elite and obtain a government-enforced monopoly over health care in the United States.

The following year the AMA was officially launched. Members' efforts were at first slow to yield results. One of their first successes was in getting the exclusive right to positions in the federal government. Then, around 1870, the AMA began to find success at setting up medical boards in each state...

Soon after the medical monopoly was formed it began to push its agenda of destroying all competition. A well organized and funded nationwide purge of all non-MDs was undertaken. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century this medical monopoly managed to shut down over forty medical schools. Their idea was to keep the number of doctors low in order to keep fees up. After WW II the medical monopoly started rigidly controlling how many of each medical specialty it would allow to be trained. So ophthalmologists, orthopedists, dermatologists, obstetricians, and others began to be in short supply. And of course when supplies are low, fees are high. The medical monopoly also managed to outlaw or marginalize over seventy healthcare professions. Protection of the healthcare consumer was, as always, the rationale for this power grab.

Whether the object of destruction by the medical monopoly be homeopaths, midwives, chiropractors, or internet prescribers, the purge is conducted in the same manner. No scientific proof or research data is offered to discredit these practitioners. The entire approach is one of character assassination directed at their profession.

On one occasion the medical monopoly did try to behave "scientifically," but this approach backfired: They tried to show that obstetricians achieved a lower infant mortality rate than did midwives, but when the data was compiled it showed the reverse was true—midwives had the better record. The medical monopoly quickly abandoned this approach and returned to their proven method of buying lawmakers and writing nasty unsubstantiated accusations in their journals. It seems the public always falls for propaganda that promises greater consumer safety...

We should strongly consider abolishing state medical boards. Do we really need an additional and separate secret police for doctors? If we elect to keep the state medical board system, then governors should not be allowed to appoint doctors to medical boards or pharmacists to boards of pharmacy. This is like putting the foxes in charge of henhouse security! If these are supposed to be consumer protection agencies, then staff them with consumers. The ideal board member is the owner-operator of a small business. Such boards could consult anyone they wish for technical or professional advice.

I am sure that the Federal Trade Commission has looked at this, probably more than once. The legal problem is that the AMA does not directly intervene in the marketplace. The medical monopoly is cleverly divided up into numerous components with legal separations that make it nearly impossible to mount an effective antitrust case. Th

[gerard]

I don't know much about medicine, that much I confess. I do know that government involvement in it has not improved it since the start of Medicare. The improvements since that time are in spite of government involvement. As far as the AMA, I know nothing of their structure, but the government shouldn't be granting them any kind of monopoly. Maybe they could still exist and do something without government blessing, but if they can't, I'm inclined to think we're better off without them.

Now, the American Bar Association is another matter. They do NOT need to be given input over Law Schools, requirements to take the Bar, or selection of judges at ANY level.

Law would improve greatly as a profession if it were moved closer to a profession one enters through Apprenticeship rather than through a series of standardized tests.

[chadburne48]

Doctors are smart people, they should handle their business. I don't see why I need to have input on it. They need to rock their own boat and not ask me to do it for them.

[chepito]

I believe it. Seems like every industry has a price fixing market controlling cartel going on these days.

[montgomery69]

This is clearly a complex issue that I think goes back to lobbying/bribery of congress. Our representatives are traitors and need to be removed, such as putting a term limit on them and getting rid of lobbyist which is supposed to just furnish information for or against an issue, not to give bribes.

[hob97]

I absolutely agree. The government should not be involved in licensing doctors. That is fascism! The individual knows if they are qualified to be a doctor better than the government does. If someone decides to be a doctor and does not do a good job, they will lose business. That is how the free-market should work. Simple as that.