FIRM: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine

 Posted by on 27 March 2007 at 10:00 pm  Health Care
Mar 272007
 

Colorado’s political machine is poised to institute socialized medicine in the state in the next year or so. Lin Zinser is fighting that ominous prospect with FIRM, a new organization devoted to promoting Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine. FIRM’s statement of principles reads:

We stand for Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.

America was founded on the principles of freedom and individual rights. Applied to medicine, the law must respect the individual rights of doctors and other providers, allowing them the freedom to practice medicine. This includes the right to choose their patients, to determine the best treatment for their patients, and to bill their patients accordingly. In the same manner, the law must respect the individual rights of patients, allowing them the freedom to seek out the best doctors and treatment they can afford.

Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility, and free market economics in health care. FIRM holds that the only moral and practical way to obtain medical care is that of individuals choosing and paying for their own medical care in a capitalist free market. Federal and state regulations and entitlements, we maintain, are the two most important factors in driving up medical costs. They have created the crisis we face today.

What does FIRM do?

  • researches and studies the work of scholars and policy experts in the areas of health care, law, philosophy, and economics to inform and to foster public debate on the causes of rising costs of health care and health insurance.
  • sponsors and holds public educational programs, lectures and town hall meetings on issues regarding the causes of the crises in health care and health insurance, and on the morality and economic costs of various health care programs and proposals.
  • makes speakers available for radio and television interviews, for professional conferences or symposiums, and for local, private or public meetings and talks in Colorado.

    FIRM provides you with information about how to protect freedom and individual rights in medicine, and you decide how to use it.

    FIRM is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization; it does not endorse any health care treatment, product, provider, or organization. Membership levels begin at $35 per year and are tax-deductible, as provided by law.

On the FIRM web site, you can sign up to the “News” and/or “Activists” list. You might also want to read the updated version of Leonard Peikoff’s essay “Health Care is Not a Right” and Linda Gorman’ informative report “The History of Health Care Costs and Health Insurance.”

Also, don’t miss FIRM’s blog: We Stand FIRM. (If you have a blog, please add that to your blogroll.)

Please help me spread the word about FIRM! In speaking to ordinary people, I’ve found strong opposition to socialized medicine, but little knowledge of the already-in-motion plans to institute that in Colorado and other states. So please encourage people to write letters to their state and federal representatives opposing socialized medicine, including its modern incarnations in euphemisms: single-payer, comprehensive, universal, and/or mandatory healthcare. If you live in Colorado, you should also write the 208 Commission, i.e. the body charged with soliciting and evaluating proposals for comprehensive healthcare reform.

It is possible to stop the spread of socialized medicine, I think. Now’s the time to do it. If you wait now, you’ll be waiting much more in the future… in lines for your substandard medical treatment, that is.

   
Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha