Health care freedom? There is None in Florida

By Maggie Harrison

Florida is in the midst of a health care crisis, a budget shortfall, a physician shortage and high unemployment. Millions of Floridians have inadequate access to basic health care, 21 percent are uninsured and many rural counties do not have a physician provider. Making matters worse, 48 percent of Florida’s practicing physicians are older than 50 and expected to retire in the next 10 years. The situation could be eased if state legislators would stop listening to special interests and join the rest of the nation by allowing other qualified health care practitioners such as Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners (ARNPs) to deliver health care.

According to a recent Florida taxpayer funded study, ARNPs could immediately save this state $339 million annually with savings to Medicaid of $7 million to $44 million yearly if restrictions were removed. The majority of states have removed all or most of the restrictions on ARNP practice because research has shown they deliver safe high quality care and reduce costs of care. ARNPs are highly trained clinicians with masters and doctoral degrees. They are nationally tested and certified to administer and manage anesthesia, manage pregnancies, deliver babies, provide inpatient hospital care, provide psychiatric care and provide full scope primary health care.

One particular special interest medical group appears to have aggressively acted to essentially create a monopoly on access to healthcare in Florida. Instead of working to increase access to care and listening to its own membership, this group continues to decrease access to patient care. They have donated heavily into the campaigns of certain state legislators, and for 17 years legislation has been derailed that would help change the status quo.

These legislators ignore three separate Florida taxpayer funded studies conducted by Agency for Health Care Administration, the Florida Senate and the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) calling for removal of restrictions.

Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission issued an opinion in March of this year urging Florida legislators to change the law, and the Institute of Medicine released an October 2010 report that recommends removal of all scope of practice restrictions on ARNPs as a way to drive down costs, while increasing access to high quality primary health care.

But Florida law makers seem bent on listening to this one special interest medical group. Since research proves that ARNPs deliver safe high quality care, it appears this group’s interest is in preventing competition, keeping costs artificially inflated and essentially maintaining a healthcare monopoly.

There can be no freedom in health care if there is no opportunity to gain access to qualified health care providers and if health care is dominated by one profession. When research and data from the majority of states and the Institutes of Medicine prove that other professionals are safe to deliver care, restrictions to care should be removed.

Dr Benjamin Rush, cosigner of the Declaration of Independence warned: “The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.”

Floridians are being denied access to health care, and taxpayers are being forced to pay for unnecessary emergency room and clinic visits because of a medical monopoly. It’s time to join the rest of the country and let ARNPs practice at their full scope of education and training. Florida cannot afford to wait any longer. We are fighting to be able to treat you. Follow us at http://www.cap-pac.org or reach me at hcfreedom1@gmail.com.

posted at http://www.boogai.net/top-story/health-care-freedom-there-is-none-in-florida/