As Dr. Jen Gunther says, who do you want in the examining room with you? The political fundraiser or your physician?
Today ACOG (the Congress) released a statement (which ACOG has removed from the web) regarding North Dakota’s legislators making medical decisions. This statement was quite clear. Legislators don’t have a medical license and should refrain from making medical decisions.
For more detailed information about North Dakota’s legislative medical decisions made without licenses, check out Capital Letters by the North Dakota Democratic Caucus (scroll down to the second entry).
It’s time all legislators and regulatory agencies returned health care decisions to physicians and their patients. It’s not the physicians who drive up the cost of health care, but rather the regulators and third party payers who daily make medical decisions, mostly without the benefit of a medical license.
North Dakota has been down this road before with a long and expensive battle to retain a sports team name. As Ryan Taylor, a North Dakota legislator who was defeated by the current governor says:
Now, in less than 24 hours after delivery, the governor has signed three bills that are intensely personal, with much higher stakes, stratospherically high emotions and, probably, a hundred different opinions about the details if you asked a hundred people. We know how it will end, but we will become a divided people, still yearning for leadership that makes realistic steps forward to care for and nurture the children and families of our state.
There are voices of reason in North Dakota. Would we had the benefit of their decision making in the current legislature.
