How Medical Boards Destroy Competition

Excellent article from the AIA this week:

"Physician pedophiles, physician sexual predators, physician addicts and drug abusers, psychotic and psychopathic doctors, as well as doctors who flagrantly endanger their patients with their medical treatments, are called before the medical board. If there has not been much media attention and the situation can be handled quietly by the board, the doctor may only have his license suspended. He may be placed in rehabilitation. Most, in time will get their license back and quietly return to practice. The medical board, like any good fraternal organization, will protect its own. The Catholic Church protects its priests. The medical boards protect their doctors.

There is one category of physician transgressor in particular the board will treat more harshly than any other. The major but unspoken mission of the state medical boards is to protect MDs from market competition.

The true purpose of this medical monopoly, like all monopolies, is to control the market. And it does so, as many would-be healthcare reformers have learned. Thus the state medical boards' greatest wrath is reserved for those doctors that dare to try innovations that may affect the medical marketplace. This fascist monopoly considers the healthcare marketplace its private domain. The physician dare not tamper with healthcare delivery. Innovations that may lower fees or streamline delivery of services cannot be tolerated by a system whose fundamental purpose is to uphold and increase its members' incomes and its political power.Medical Boards and the Destruction of CompetitionSoon after the medical monopoly was formed it began to push its agenda of destroying all competition. A well organized and funded nationwide purge of all non-MDs was undertaken. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century this medical monopoly managed to shut down over forty medical schools. Their idea was to keep the number of doctors low in order to keep fees up. After WW II the medical monopoly started rigidly controlling how many of each medical specialty it would allow to be trained. So ophthalmologists, orthopedists, dermatologists, obstetricians, and others began to be in short supply. And of course when supplies are low, fees are high."