Why doctors are sick of their profession

> I'd have more respect for you if you called me an idiot for my views

Well, since you're inviting personal criticism, then, and suggesting it might engender more respect for critics and their opposing points than a doctor weighing in on your position...

It'd seem that you suffer from all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking -- that when confronted with tension between two ideals you don't know what to do except pick a single winner and declare that any attempt to balance tension between the two as an unacceptable compromise against the value you've judged higher.

I'd also guess that if you think that government services are theft, you might have built a philosophy around property rights without ever having thought much about property itself, which is about a real, universal, and solid as the cartesian plane at best.

Finally (and perhaps most specifically and pertinently), while I'd be willing to believe that you may be familiar with the regulatory aspects that directly affect your professional life (and invite you to express your confidence about this by drawing attention to the specific market vacuum you've left behind in case someone else doesn't share your opinion), your summary doesn't seem to me to be a particularly accurate description of the state of values/laws when it comes to health care in the US.

For example, if you're talking about EMTALA as the decades-old invocation of care rights (and I'm not sure what else you would be talking about), there a number of key caveats that I'd think would prevent any sensible person from characterizing it as slavery, perhaps most notably that (a) there's only obligation incurred for institutions that choose to accept medicare payments AND (b) it doesn't compel anyone to into going into providing emergency service in the first place, it compels those who choose to provide emergency service (and accepting medicare) to provide emergency service without regard to ability to pay.

If someone can choose to avoid providing a specific service (or stop when they like), and only incurs obligations by making an agreement with a specific payor, they're not a slave, and it's possibly more disingenuous to invoke the term in this context than it is to invoke the term "theft" when discussing taxes and government services.

> Its all just negotiating the terms of your slavery if you agree that people have the "right" to health care.

People do sometimes speak of the struggle many face for access to health care in terms of rights. Mostly what I think they're trying to express (sometimes poorly) is that they feel the value of giving every member of a society some minimum level of access to health care services is a good on par with the value of property rights, possibly higher. And as such it's worth some limited abridgment of the later.

There are some good arguments for this, even when starting with personal liberty/property rights as a high value: liberty and property don't mean much in a context where life and health aren't protected, and the related risk management and insurance is an area where incentives are screwy enough markets aren't great at the job, which is one reason you see people like Hayek support at least the idea of social insurance.

Rather than looking into the laws yourself, you should have consulted a lawyer. You would have learned how the rules actually apply to service providers of health institutions instead of developing a serious misunderstanding of how HIPPA works.

Your comment could be the perfect solution to a homework problem in a critical thinking class:

Give an example of a slippery slope argument in economics, social science or politics.

As other others have pointed out HIPPA is an old law. But what most people do not realize is that it has not been enforced (for 10 years?) because no bureaucracy had responsibility for enforcement. This has led to a high level of complacency regarding the seriousness of the HIPPA law. HIPPA now has an "owner" (i.e. enforcer) at the HHS in the Dept. of Civil Rights and they are spooling up to start cracking down and auditing and fining healthcare providers and their business associates. This process has already begun so things are about to change.

For years, under advice of my lawyer, I operated under a signed contract with all my healthcare customers that included a disclaimer that HIPPA was not my responsibility and I had no HIPPA responsibilities. Recent decisions by the DCR have ruled such disclaimers invalid and defined Business Associates as providers to healthcare providers that have access to PHI and thus to which the HIPPA regulations apply directly. My lawyer said he can no longer limit my liability or responsibility for HIPPA with a disclaimer and advised me to implement full HIPPA compliant policies, procedures and documentation or drop my healthcare customers.

Please feel free to ignore reality if you want to get blind-sided by this.

> Putting patients first is the part that seems "right." That's not a coincidence, it's the job.

You claim a responsibility for the trust between the doctor-client relationship but with govt control of medicine its now a three-way and one of the parties is holding a gun to your head. You can't put your client first under govt controlled medical system. The doctors are very unhappy, as 2mur expressed "There is no chance I would do it again" and I have heard from many doctors. Following the regulations or the bureaucrats comes first and you know this because I have yet to hear of a doctor not complain about this.

Also, if you are British you should realize the Empire died a long time ago when they stopped calling the uncivilized peoples savages. Your embarrassment on my behalf is quaint but no longer necessary.