Americans for Free Choice in Medicine

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: The Trump administration has vowed to "crush" healthcare fraud. We discuss the limitations of only pursuing bad actors to prevent healthcare fraud, and we argue that reforms should also focus on liberating honest providers. youtu.be/B90RGC2OEiw?si…

The idea that more healthcare dollars should be controlled by patients themselves has been gaining popularity in recent years. In this episode, @Terrilox explains her vision and strategy for empowering patients. youtu.be/-Rwufl2joKw?si…

CMH friend @AmeshAA with an excellent and important message regarding Gilead and HIV PrEP drug Lenacapavir. *They* worked to develop it, and it is right for them to produce and sell it as they see fit. Without Gilead, there would be no Lenacapavir. More: youtu.be/Xbynzl1N1eE?si…

"Regulated firms whose explicit financial profit rate is restricted have every incentive to allow costs to rise, taking various benefits in nonpecuniary forms, such as fringe benefits (especially for management), more relaxed (inefficient) management, less innovative activity and the headaches it brings, less unpleasantness such as firing people or hiring associates who are offensive in manner, race, or sex. In addition, the more costs the regulated firm can accumulate--and get the regulatory agency to accept as valid--the higher its total profits at a given rate of profit." If anyone ever needs a Sowell passage that can be applied to health insurance and the MLR, here you go. Knowledge and Decisions, p198.

Health is personal. Freedom is what we need to create and pursue it. When government promises "healthcare security," that implies control over prices, plans, and your choices.

Would you eat at a restaurant that gives you a menu without any prices on it, and then when you ask for a menu that does have prices on it, they hand you one with ridiculously inflated price labels next to each item, but reassure you that you won't actually pay those list prices--you'll pay a different, lower price based on what membership card you have. And when you ask what that lower price is, they can't reliably tell you, but promise to send you a bill in the mail a month later telling you what you actually owe. Welcome to the American healthcare system, which is the way it is not because businesses set out to do business this way, but because this is where they've found themselves after reacting to each previous policy and intervention (e.g., tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, institutionalized third-party payment, gov't reimbursement formulae, cross-subsidization of public programs, etc.)

The quiet scandal of U.S. healthcare: the more "insured" we've become, the less like customers we've been allowed to act.

Most people probably spend more time and effort shopping for auto insurance than they do for health insurance. That's a little backwards. youtu.be/fwew7GbNTHw?si…

Real reform means leveling the playing field and shifting incentives so providers and insurers compete to deliver genuine value to patients. centerformodernhealth.org/publications/d…

NEW EPISODE: Disrupting healthcare beyond challenging vested interests youtu.be/0iCdldltY8E?si… via @YouTube (also available on RSS)

Read more: centerformodernhealth.org/publications/d…

New episode: Cutting out health insurance to shop for healthcare rss.com/podcasts/poh-a…

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Breaking up Big Medicine won't free up Patients and Providers. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bre…

Falling in love with one singular model (HMOs, PPOs, Mayo, Kaiser Permanente, DPC, ACOs, etc.) and wanting that to be "the one" isn't a good approach to improving healthcare. We should want whatever mix of models freely emerges from a process of competition.

Big News! Ray and Colleen at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine will be joining the Center for Modern Health. Listen to Yaron Brook interview us about these changes and our discussion on the state of US healthcare reform. youtube.com/watch?v=QVh6Ko…

Medicine has long treated markets as morally suspect, teaching doctors to ignore costs and view profit as corrupting. This anti-market ethos, not economics, explains resistance to free-market health policy. centerformodernhealth.org/publications/a…

Why so little support for free markets in healthcare? Because our view of a moral doctor is anti-free market. That needs to change. Until then, advocates for free markets in healthcare will be fighting a loosing battle. To learn more, read this article: sensible-med.com/p/why-healthca…

A real alternative to the ACA enhanced subsidies, let alone Obamacare itself, remains elusive. Why? @afcm_org youtu.be/x_R-8s1pNuQ?si…

A turn-the-tables hypothetical, but... if a health insurance company operating in a genuinely free market put together a product featuring guaranteed issue and community rating, could it even sell it as "insurance"? The combination of those things are so anathema to the concept of insurable risks, it would practically be deceptive advertising. Imagine in such a world the FTC or state regulators stepping in: "Um, sorry but you can't call that insurance. You're going to have to market that as a pre-paid pooled health consumption membership."

The unaffordability of healthcare is not just an economic but a deeply moral issue. Colleen Smith and Reinier Schuur argue that the view that we have a right to affordable healthcare is not only immoral but is also what makes healthcare so unaffordable. youtube.com/watch?v=_ARuV3…