“Drastic times call for drastic measures.” So much confusion and chaos is surrounding the health care of America. Patients are fearful and, for the most part, misinformed. The reasons for fear are mixed with the causes of misinformation. The unknown and the ongoing dismantling of societal structure, and professional integrity, and cultural sobriety have caused profound popular anxiety. This serves to energize ideological theory into practical experience and the hysteria that now motivates formerly rational, freedom-minded voters to accept false premises of political/social/economic proposals is prevalent.
I did not realize how important the private practice of medicine really is to the preservation of individual and national freedom. Although many of our liberties have been regulated, mandated and relegated to the history books, those that remain must be optimized and exercised to recover and restore what has been taken away. Independent medical decision-making resulting from the interaction of compassionate, communicating physicians and the courageous, responsible patients they treat, must be preserved. When corporate systems, which operate under policies that preserve the system at the expense of personal liberty, govern how health care is delivered, dangerous and onerous opportunities arise. In time, these opportunities not only work to impede and ultimately destroy the best health care system in the world, they serve to create the politic whereby masses of people are enslaved, and they are then ruled by narrow and restrictive policies. They no longer are able to make the individualized, personal, and probably best decisions for themselves and their families. They may be “forced,” compelled, and “afforded care” they don`t want, at times don‘t need, and most likely can’t pay for especially if it is in the hospital and/or through the system that is controlled by “medicrats” (bureaucratic administrators or legislators of health care).
Medical care is not a right. It is a privilege and a responsibility. It is a privilege to relate to another human being who has your best interest and concerns foremost in his thinking and who serves to relieve suffering, pain and fear with compassionately demonstrated knowledge, wisdom and courage. Your doctor should be one of your most treasured friends. You have the opportunity to guard the framework of the friendship and professional relationship by cordial and responsible communication and compensation, reasonably worked out by you and your doctor.
Health care costs need not rise exponentially as they have over the past 10-15 years. But, in order to keep this from happening there must be allowed to operate free-market principles of economics in the administration of health care delivery. Shrewd and clever entrepreneurs have been successful in changing the dynamics and expectations of the economics of health care. Our prosperity has served to define our expectations. Adversity makes men; prosperity makes monsters. Fee-for-service and transparency in medical expense disclosure will go a long way to repair a broken system. Medicare is not good for your health.
There is nothing to prevent reasonable and rational solutions to our problem except ourselves and our own fears. Pooling risk and sharing burdens for those major and catastrophic medical occurrences is wise and prudent and should be a high priority for every one of us. Anytime the government is large and powerful enough to give you something, it is also able to take it away. This “something for nothing,” socialistic, humanistic ideology that has captivated our struggling culture will fail in its attempt to provide the utopian solution for those who allow slavery to resurface by their failure to stand and defend all that is liberty. God help us.
Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her under-graduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989. She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Since 1988, she has been chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Pima County (Arizona) Medical Society. She is the author of 
