Jeffrey Singer on How Government Killed the Medical Profession

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Credit: Whitehouse / Flickr

Government interventions in the medical profession over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors are exiting the field. Others are seeing their private practices threatened with bankruptcy, or are giving up their autonomy for the life of a shift-working hospital employee. As Jeffrey A. Singer, a general surgeon with more than three decades in private practice explains, governments and hospital administrators hold all the power, while doctors—and worse still, patients—hold none.