THE POINT
It’s been governors and other government executives who’ve responded to COVID-19 — over protests from physicians and their medical societies — by removing the red tape of doctors’ protectionist rules to speed healthcare to those who urgently need it.
DISCUSSION
In the midst of a pandemic, we need physicians’ medical knowledge and clinical skills to get the best care to those infected or at risk of being infected. But we don’t need their insular, self-interested approaches to the way such medical knowledge and clinical skills are delivered to those who need them.
It’s worth noting that important parts of the red tape impeding health care responses to COVID-19 were created — and defended by — the medical profession and institutions promoting its interests.
And it took people outside of the medical profession — specifically, governors and other officials focused on the larger picture (i.e., public health) — to get us past those barriers that organized medicine had placed in the way of those results: