On October 4 I chaired a seminar, for first-year medical students at Duke University, on Health Care Reform and Individual Rights. My contention is that any meaningful, proper proposal for health-care reform must recognize and defend the rights of doctors to practice medicine as they deem fit, in voluntary, contractual agreement with their employers and patients. Students (and the public) rarely hear this point of view–it was almost entirely missing from the debates over the passage of Obamacare. It should not be surprising that such a defense is entirely missing from the bill, and that the bill massively undermines such rights.
For a sample of the ideas at the forefront of this seminar, see a lecture I gave in 2009 to Duke medical students: