BRIAN BEDKOBER
ABSTRACT: It is inevitable that a licensing process controlled by government must sooner or later result in the exploitation of the process to serve political ends. It ought also to be unsurprising when deliberate attempts to restrict entry to a particular trade or profession raises prices and creates turf wars whilst achieving very little in terms of patient safety. Regulatory controls inhibit innovation and they prevent patients from gaining access to a wider range of treatment options. In the case of health care, the features of a centralized licensing process are predictably exacerbated when they are combined with a universal taxpayer-funded health system. When government finds that it is simply impossible to fund all the health care promises that it has made it necessarily restricts access to care on a collective basis – including access to the best trained providers.
AUTHOR: Brian Bedkober is a medical doctor who served as the National President of the Private Doctors of Australia, which started in 1968 as a break-away group from within the Australian Medical Association. The organisation took umbrage at the AMA’s readiness to negotiate with government on matters that were considered beyond the proper scope of government control.
[Download PDF format]
ABSTRACT: It is inevitable that a licensing process controlled by government must sooner or later result in the exploitation of the process to serve political ends. It ought also to be unsurprising when deliberate attempts to restrict entry to a particular trade or profession raises prices and creates turf wars whilst achieving very little in terms of patient safety. Regulatory controls inhibit innovation and they prevent patients from gaining access to a wider range of treatment options. In the case of health care, the features of a centralized licensing process are predictably exacerbated when they are combined with a universal taxpayer-funded health system. When government finds that it is simply impossible to fund all the health care promises that it has made it necessarily restricts access to care on a collective basis – including access to the best trained providers.
AUTHOR: Brian Bedkober is a medical doctor who served as the National President of the Private Doctors of Australia, which started in 1968 as a break-away group from within the Australian Medical Association. The organisation took umbrage at the AMA’s readiness to negotiate with government on matters that were considered beyond the proper scope of government control.
[Download PDF format]
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