The question before the legislature is should young people be required to
sacrifice their civil liberties just to become a physician.
Or should these young people choose another course with …less irrational legal
constraint like finance for example.
Should they be required to sacrifice family life and hundreds of thousands of
dollars just to work for the momentary pleasure of some corporate hospital
huckster.
Depending upon how the legislature comes down on the immunity question , The
answer is pretty obvious isn’t it?
A bright future for medicine depends on creating a safe environment to practice
medicine.
They take this all consuming journey to learn to take care of human beings. This
is not an act of Revolt against society.
This is an act of optimism and love and dedication to the well being of our
country and to the human race.
Medical education is not undertaken to take orders from the AMA or the hospital
industry or to sanctify any substitute agenda besides the doctor patient
relationship PERIOD.
Doctors do not become doctors to get into a battle with lawyers or corporations
or insurance companies or the legislature.
Their fatal flaw is that they think that the rules of evidence that apply to
medicine, the natural law, should apply to the legal environment of medical
practice.
They also have the reasonable expectation that they will be judged with fairness
and equanimity in the law just like any other citizen.
Currently nothing could be further from the truth. Doctors have no civil
liberties.
Working as a Doctor us best compared to living in Russia under communism.
While the practice of medicine has its own politics there is nothing sacred
about medical politics. There is nothing sanctified about medical politics.
So here we see in 2 extremes of medicine the good and the bad. The sanctified
and the profane.
About 10% of doctors belong to the AMA close to 90% do not. Does that mean that
90% of doctors are suspect. Hardly.
So what should the legislature do to insure a bright future for healthcare.
According to the principles of the natural law they should sanctify optimism and
idealism of those who are thinking about becoming doctors by refusing to rob
them of the full rights of American citizenship, as the peer review process
implies, just because they become doctors.
Alternatively they can choose to sanctify the peer review process over the
rights of independent physicians, the agenda of medical politics and screw every
doctor who chooses to practice in the state.
The answer will determine the future of health care. It is also simple and time
tested.
Richard Willner directs the The Center for Peer Review Justice