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No
"The Massachusetts Medical Society and Walden cases teach a hard lession,
and send a strong, unequivocal message to the physicians not only of Massachusetts, but throughout the nation: while fitness
remains the core requirement for the granting and renewal of a professional license, as surely it must, now, expressly according
to Walden and implicitly according to Massachusetts Medical Society, "anti-social acts" are to be synonymous with "unfitness."
"Anti-social acts" like refusing to spend one day a week practicing in a leper colony? Or in a maximum security prison? Or
refusing to join the state National Guard? Or doing anything else that the state might deem socially useful?" LIke refusing
to perform surgery on HIV-positive patients"
"Unfortunately, the "other state objectives" sought to be accomplished
by legislatures are not going to end with health care cost containment for the elderly (many of whom, it should be noted,
are more affluent than the physicians who treat them). For example, at about the same time that mandatory Medicare assignment
as a condition for licensure came to Massachusetts, a bill was introduced in that legislature attaching the same conditions
for Medicaid patients. Although it did not pass, the idea behind the bill was exactly the same as the idea upon which mandatory
Medicare assignment rests, and idea now validated constitutionally by both the highest federal and state courts in Massachusetts:
the physicians' license to practice medicine is held in servitude to state-perceived medical needs. "
"Given that those needs are growing larger every day, as the Bipartisan
Commission report discussed above makes clear, it is only a matter of time until other states latch on to the idea that they
can "solve" their perceived health care needs not by politically unpopular and often unacceptable method of raising taxes
generally, but rather by increasing the servitude of America's physicians. Their licenses will then become a yoke by which
they will be pulled toward state-dictated medical servitude. Eventually, more and more of America's physicians will refuse
to practice as mere handmaids of government. Actually, that is already happening. "
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Deval Patrick dismisses uproar over health-care loopholes
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Why the Government Cannot Control Medical Costs
Patients' files left at public dump
The Massachusetts Health-Care 'Train Wreck'
An Act Relative to an Affordable Health Plan.
Jury ties doctors errors to boys death
The End of Fee-for-Service Medicine? Proposals for Payment Reform in Massachusetts
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Information
The Massachusetts Health-Care 'Train Wreck'
The Unequal State of America: a Reuters series
Cops-use-Taser-on-woman-buying-too-many-iPhones
'You have to look at Massachusetts for state mandated insurance. Unfortunately,
the level of insurance reimbursement for patients under safety net coverage plans is at the level of Medicaid or less. Consequently
communities which can support a two tier system of outpatient care often have inadequately funded and sparsely supported local
secondary hospitals and have a tendency to refer complex non-emergency care to tertiary academic centers better able to absorb
inpatient care losses. Moreover, once strong multi-specialty groups in these communities have tended to eliminate general
surgeons from their staffs because of an inability to meet their salary expectations and traditional costs of living, forcing
these individuals into hospital employment where they often must substitute for GI endoscopists who are dropping off hospital
staffs for the safety of their own endoscopy centers. Internists who in the past represented the heart and soul of these groups
have become hospitalists, intensivists or ER shift workers for their community hospitals. Pediatricians, cardiologists, nephrologists
and orthopedists now control the groups. Dentists laugh at them all.
RN's who are dependent on local community hospitals
for employment have become administrators and chart checkers at their local hospitals but for the most part have been forced
to unionize to maintain their jobs and incomes. They tend to rule the roost at most community hospitals, having jumped physicians
in the hospital pecking order. Who could have foreseen this? '
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