Having just returned from New Jersey where I attended the quarterly board meeting of the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, I realized how critically important a crisis medical preparedness strategy has become. The AAPS is the organization which represents patients and physicians in a public forum for the defense of the private practice of medicine. With the Supreme Court's decision on the misnamed Affordable Care Act forthcoming in June, the potential for extreme and innovative measures looms likely for the preservation of essential principles which have created and maintained the highest quality medical care in the world. Although many important factors must be in place to ensure this highest quality, the necessary and most important component must be the vigilant guarding of the patient/physician relationship. Government intervention and other mechanistic and impersonal inventions, including third party insurance, with its limitation of care determined by “medicratic” interference, are moving us toward a single-payer system of ultimate control. Decision making by the patient and physician will give way to rationing and restrictive protocol determined by socialist, progressive and, I believe, harmful policies that will change the character of American health care. Socialist dogma correctly alleges, when government (those in power) controls the health care delivery system, socialism prevails. This signals the end of our Republic and thus, the end of American's freedom. Preparation requires courage and innovation: courage to stand in opposition and innovation to ensure that fundamentals of liberty and responsibility prevail.
Although economic philosophies are being argued, the predominant ideology of our Congress and executive leadership presupposes redistribution of wealth, increasing centralization of power, and utilization of goods and services to be managed by those other than producers, providers, and consumers. The operation of the principles and policies of the practice of private medicine must be given freedom to expand. This will empower and free the patient who is in need of medical care, and the physician who is in a position to offer it. This can occur only when individuals awaken to our own responsibility and privilege. Now is the time for rational, reasonable, and relational decision making that is born out of the principles of freedom, responsibility, and equity.
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Dr. Tom Kendall Sr., graduate of Medical College of Georgia and Family Physician, has served Greenville for 33 years. He is husband to Jan, father of 7, and grandfather to 5.
