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Our medical care is too important to leave to the politicians. Over the years, doctors and patients have been squeezed out of the policymaking process. This has resulted in the powerful driving health policy toward government control of our medical care.
Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck created the model for socialized medicine in 1883. In the face of the rising Socialist Movement, he granted the nascent socialists free medical care to mollify them. One of the first acts of Lenin’s new Bolshevik government was to institute national health insurance. It was clear: national health insurance gave control over the population and, importantly, over physicians. Doctors are a calculated target – they tend to be free thinkers, and they must be reined in.
The 1930s Great Depression gave a window of opportunity for President Franklin Roosevelt to rally Americans to support government intervention on a massive scale. Thirty-seven new government agencies and reams of regulations were born. The creation of the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, better known as Social Security, was the mother of government-sponsored medicine.
Roosevelt wanted national health insurance as part of his Social Security legislation, but political opposition led him to drop the idea in order to get the legislation passed. On Aug. 14, 1935, the 29-page Social Security Act became law, and the role of the federal government was changed forever. The Social Security Act (which includes Medicare and Medicaid) is now over 3,400 pages.
Starting in World War II, the government became more and more involved in managing our medical care. It started in 1965 with Medicare and Medicaid. Through the years, more regulations, prior authorizations, and patient databases became commonplace. The stake in the heart of physician autonomy and our medical privacy was slipped into the Stimulus Bill in 2009 (The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Care (HITECH) of 2009). In order to get full payment for physician services, we had to use electronic medical records linked to the government Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
My guest and I will discuss what we can do to decrease costs and increase access to care while maintaining the principles of good, individualized medicine.
To find an independent physician go to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons website, https://aapsonline.org/direct-payment-cash-friendly-practices/ and Join the Wedge (of Freedom) – https://jointhewedge.com.
To find Direct Primary Care practices: https://www.dpcfrontier.com.
Dr. Elaina George is a Board Certified Otolaryngologist (Ear, Nose, and Throat physician). She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Biology and received her Master’s degree in Medical Microbiology from Long Island University. She earned her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr George completed her residency at Manhattan, Eye Ear & Throat Hospital. She is the author of Big Medicine: The Cost of Corporate Control and How Doctors and Patients Working Together Can Rebuild a Better System, a book that explores how the U.S. healthcare system has evolved and explains how patients and doctors can create a healthcare system that is based on the principles of price transparency with the power of the doctor-patient relationship. She currently also has a radio show, Living in the Solution.
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