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Statement of Principles and Goals

We stand for Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.

America was founded on the principles of freedom and individual rights. Applied to medicine, the law must respect the individual rights of doctors and other providers, allowing them the freedom to practice medicine.

This includes the right to choose their patients, to determine the best treatment for their patients, and to bill their patients accordingly. In the same manner, the law must respect the individual rights of patients, allowing them the freedom to seek out the best doctors and treatment they can afford.

Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility, and free market economics in health care.

FIRM holds that the only moral and practical way to obtain medical care is that of individuals choosing and paying for their own medical care in a capitalist free market.

Federal and state regulations and entitlements, we maintain, are the two most important factors in driving up medical costs. They have created the crisis we face today.

What does FIRM do?

John C. Goodman, Ph.D. is founder and president of the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Wall Street Journal called Dr. Goodman "the Father of Health Savings Accounts", and National Journal declared him "winner of the devolution derby" because his ideas on ways to transfer power from government to the people have had a significant impact on Capitol Hill.

Dr. Goodman is the author of nine books, including Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World; Leaving Women Behind: Modern Families, Outdated Laws; Economics of Public Policy, a widely used college textbook, and Patient Power: Solving America's Health Care Crisis, the condensed version of which sold 300,000 copies.

Dr Goodman is credited with playing a pivotal role in the defeat of the Clinton administration's plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system.

Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM) is a national non-profit, non-partisan educational organization.

AFCM promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility and free market economics in the health care industry.

AFCM advocates a full, free market health care system by promoting health savings accounts (HSA' s), tax equity for the individual.

AFCM teaches the history of HMOs, which- far from being an outgrowth of, or manifestation of a free market in medicine-  were actually instituted by a long, incremental process of government  intervention.

AFCM sponsors educational programs, lectures and town hall meetings for the public. Membership grades begin at $40 per year and may be tax-deductible.

Members include patients, Medicare recipients, physicians, nurses and health care professionals, insurance industry professionals, including agents, pharmacists and pharmaceutical industry professionals, financial services professionals, businessmen, employee benefits professionals and hospital staff. AFCM was founded in 1993

DocsFighting4HealthCareReform Digest is a free informational digest for doctors who recognize that the US medical system, though the best in the world, is in crisis due to the destruction of the doctor-patient relationship and how we pay for health care.

This crisis directly results from harmful government regulations, employer-controlled health insurance, entitlement programs and Managed Care- which subvert personal responsibility and cost-conscious behavior in medical decision making. Symptoms include: rising costs and uninsured, reduced care, bureaucratic denial of information and treatment and the erosion of our basic freedoms.

Many proposals by politicians, intellectuals and medical professionals themselves further remove control and responsibility over medical decision-making from the individual, placing it in the hands of the same government and 3rd party-payer bureaucracies which have created the crisis in the first place.

Expanding government-financed Medicare to include prescription drugs, and other socialist proposals not only violate personal freedom, individual and property rights, but will only cause deteriorations in quality and accessibility to health care.

Only a system that protects the individual rights and financial incentives of medical producers and that restores personal control, responsibility and cost-consciousness in medical decision-making to medical consumers can solve this crisis.

DocsFighting4HealthCareReform Digest promotes the idea that doctors properly fight for the future of our patients by fighting first for *themselves*, and for all producers and providers of the quality services people depend on, and by educating their patients and colleagues in the proper principles of medical reform. It promotes free market medical economics and a philosophy of individual rights and personal responsibility.