The "Patient Bill of Rights" is Political Window Dressing

As a health care provider, here is my proposal for a patient bill of rights:

1. The right to enter voluntary, contractual relationships with doctors -- without paternalistic interference on the part of federal and state governments. For example: laws mandating that health insurance pay for everything under the sun, thereby driving up the costs for people who may not want those benefits.

2. The right to purchase health care -- and medical insurance -- in a competitive, free marketplace where there are no restrictions except for fraud and objective malpractice. Keep in mind that our current system, with all its government regulations and mandates, much more closely resembles socialism than freedom.

3. The right to be treated by doctors whose only concern is to provide competent medical treatment -- and who are not compelled to honor the maze of complex, often contradictory regulations of government (in the case of Medicare) and government-inspired and supported HMOs. If your doctor is not as attentive or kind as you would like, there's a reason: he or she is buried in bureaucracy, created by your beloved politicians.

It doesn't have to be any more complicated than this. The "patient's rights" plans proposed by liberals like Ted Kennedy and John McCain are empty bromides, designed merely to make them look like they feel our pain. It's political window-dressing, not reality.

I exist and work every day of my professional life in the health care field. I know of what I speak. These politicians do not. These are many of the same politicians who tried to cram the Clinton Health Care bill down our throats in 1994 -- which, among other things, referred to any negotiated financial arrangements between doctor and patient as "bribery."

How about a bill of rights for doctors and health care professionals as well? Since when do patients have rights, while doctors do not? Like it or not, doctors have a moral right to charge what they judge appropriate for their services, balanced by what patients are able and willing to pay in the competitive market (which no longer exists in health care).

If we had less third-party intervention -- particularly from government -- there would be no perceived need for a "patient's bill of rights" in the first place.

Dr. Michael Hurd is a psychotherapist, life coach and author of Effective Therapy (New York: Dunhill, 1997) and Grow Up America! Visit his website at: www.DrHurd.com.