Dear America:

You might as well hear now what your doctors will be telling you if ObamaCare ever gets implemented. An eloquent message from Dr. Rich Fogoros. Thank you.

" Direct-pay physicians are being castigated all across the land for being greedy, elitist, selfish, lazy and unethical.  And if they cannot be shamed into returning to the medical gulag, they will soon be prosecuted into doing so.

When the attacks become serious, direct-pay doctors need to be prepared with a clear and compelling answer; an answer that does not offer any apologies; an answer that does not rely on the “goodies” that go along with having a direct-pay physician (things like same-day appointments, or access to the doctor’s cell phone number and e-mail address); an answer that instead boldly expresses in plain language that what they are doing does not destroy but salvages medical ethics, and indeed, it is the ONLY way that remains for doctors to practice their profession ethically.

What direct-pay doctors need is a John Galt speech.

And since I fear most of you have missed it, I reproduce my proposed John Galt speech here.
(I have liberally borrowed parts of the first three paragraphs from the actual John Galt speech in Atlas Shrugged. The blame for the rest of it falls solely upon your faithful author.)

A John Galt Speech For Direct-Pay Practitioners

DrRich | September 12th, 2012 - 6:52 am

“You demand to know what has happened to us, the physicians you thought you controlled. You have cried that our sins are destroying the world and you have cursed us for our unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every turn. You have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. 

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.
“While you were dragging us to your sacrificial altars, we physicians who value justice, independence, reason, and self-esteem – we finally came to see the nature of the game you were playing, which we had previously been too innocently generous to grasp. And we have chosen to play no longer.

“All the physicians who have vanished from your system, the doctors you hated, yet dreaded to lose, we are gone from you. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider your need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are making our own way, apart from you.

“In your cynical attempt to control the healthcare system, you have coerced us – with your threats to our livelihood, threats of massive fines, threats of jail – to abandon our sacred obligation to our patients. Society must come first, you say. The needs of the collective are paramount, you insist. We must do what the experts tell us to do, you demand. And in the process you have destroyed the doctor-patient relationship which is the backbone of our profession. 

You have reduced physicians to ciphers, to puppets. And you have reduced our patients – the living, loving, hoping, striving people who come to us, who place their trust in us and their lives in our hands – to interchangeable members of a vast herd. You have demanded that we guard society’s interests, and abandon our sick to their own devices in your cruel and parsimonious healthcare system.

“Your process is now firmly established. Your methods have been legislated by Congress, embodied in volumes of rules, regulations and “guidelines” (strictly and ruthlessly enforced), upheld by the courts, and finally (and most tellingly) sanctioned as being entirely “ethical” by your allies, the leadership of our own professional organizations. You have made the healthcare system untenable for doctors who value true medical ethics.

“You have placed us into a position where we must either resign ourselves to an unethical, demeaning, health-destroying style of practice, or get out. We have gotten out.

“We have gotten out. We have left your Program. We refuse to sacrifice ourselves for you any longer. We will not sacrifice our livelihoods, our morals, our independence, our minds, or our patients for your bastardized idea of virtue...."

Read The Whole Thing Here