We tend to look at doctors as authority figures, and this was clearly an appeal to that authority status. However, we also need to look at doctors as people who have their own best interests at heart, and the interests of their employers, and the hospital that allows them to practice medicine. So we dispense with the fallacy of authority and we beg for reason.
Surprisingly, today we read in the Journal Sentinel it comes from the governor’s office.
Gov. Jim Doyle said Tuesday that he could not support a moratorium on hospital construction in Wisconsin but said rules of a state authority used by health care organizations to get favorable building loan rates may need to be changed to consider the need for new medical facilities.
That state authority is the Wisconsin Health and Educational Facilities Authority, which provides capital financing assistance to non-profit health care and educational institutions.
Doyle said in an interview that his administration is "far short of making a proposal" to amend the way the authority operates. But, he said, his staff is looking at whether some sort of distinction should be made about whether proposed building projects are needed when health care organizations apply for financial assistance through the authority. Need is not now considered.The free market is notably absent in health care. Rather than banishing it further, via a moratorium or even the simple refusal to allow Aurora to build their hospital, we should look to find ways to make health care more of a free market model. The governor’s proposal is a step in the right direction.
"There may be a way where you don't have to go through a whole government bureaucracy but make a distinction between a new hospital that's needed in a community and one that going to be a competitive business," Doyle said, referring to the financing mechanism.
