Licensing As A Franchise

When a hospital receives a license to operate, it gets a valuable franchise. When a person or corporation receives a license to practice (or to employ practitioners to practice)  a health care profession or render health services, he or she or it gets a valuable franchise. The license is a barrier to competition. The public has provided the institution and the health care professional with an opportunity to render services and earn above-average incomes (compared to other Americans) with little regard for a specific reciprocal obligation of the health care professional to provide services to the public. Why shouldn't the public demand services from health institutions and professionals as a condition of licensure? Perhaps less of a focus on less high-tech glamorous and trivial services (check your local newspaper for ads), and a greater focus on important health services to the poor, services in underserved areas and public health services would be a reasonable and appropriate precondition to licensure.

"Quality" health care

"Quality" health care is a term devised by attorneys to replace "high quality health care."  Malpractice defense attorneys, losing cases in which their clients had trumpeted themselves as providing high quality health care, found themselves  trying to explain away their clients' abysmal professional practices which experts pointed out did not measure up to generally accepted standards of practice and was not of high quality.  So some attorneys advised clients to use the meaningless term "quality health care" instead.  If your health care provider uses the term "quality health care" you should assume you
are probably dealing with a weasel who has established and meets low standards,  justifying a claim of "quality" compliance. Do you want to place your life, health and wallet in the hands of a "weasel"?