ST. PAUL, Minn.—Somewhere in the progression of government intrusion into the exam room, bureaucratic red tape in medicine, impersonal and expensive care, and the blatant stripping away of patient privacy, an important fact was forgotten.
Health care is for patients. If health care doesn’t work for patients, it doesn’t work.
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) is urging medical professionals, lawmakers, policy writers and patients themselves to remember this crucial element and return to a place where health care meant just that—care.
“To return to a health care system where patients are put first again and doctors have the freedom and ethical obligation to care for them the best way they know how, outsider management and control of the patient-doctor relationship must end,” said Twila Brase, president and co-founder of CCHF. “Third-party involvement by government and managed care from the first dollar of care is the reason why health care is so expensive today.
“There was a time when health insurance was used for what insurance is for: protection from the financial risk of expensive major medical events,” Brase added. “Patients had a deductible for minor and routine care, and affordable catastrophic insurance stepped in to cover disasters such as comas, cancer and car accidents. But under Obamacare, managed care corporations charge more and offer less than former catastrophic coverage plans, often denying access to care.”
Brase adds that a health care system that returned to true health insurance and a protected doctor-patient relationship would offer a much brighter—and freer—future:
- Patients who feel valued and cared about
- Time with doctors that doesn’t feel rushed with no restrictions on what they can talk about
- House calls
- Full choice of doctors and hospitals
- The doctor’s office is a safe place where patient confidentiality is protected.
- Prices for care and coverage are actually affordable
- Mission of medicine—helping patients—is restored to doctors
- Patients no longer feel like cogs in the wheel of corporate health care, as personal touch, eye contact and a real sense of being cared for are restored.
“The intrusions of big government and managed care are squeezing out the caring and ethical practice of medicine,” Brase concluded. “Today’s doctors work under restrictive Medicare agreements and managed care contracts. But the only contract doctors should have is with their patients because doctors should be working for patients—the only reason we have a health care system.”
CCHF is a national patient-centered health freedom organization existing to protect health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy rights that focuses on critical health care issues such as Obamacare, REAL ID, compromised baby DNA and the dangers of Electronic Health Records (EHRs).
For more information about CCHF, visit its web site at www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cchfreedomor its Twitter feed, @CCHFreedom.