guthealthcare.com

Again, the opposition

Since the healthcare system is entirely geared up to covertly ration healthcare, since covert rationing requires destruction of the doctor-patient relationship, and since PHCAs are a sneaky way of re-establishing that relationship outside the present system, then there is only one way for the healthcare system to respond. The threat posed by PHCAs will be recognized immediately, and everything possible will be done to stifle this new profession. Those attacking PHCAs will be the usual suspects - the insurance industry, the government, activist groups striving for a centralized healthcare system - and in addition, this time, organized medicine.

Attempts will be made to declare PHCAs' activities illegal, and to block PHCAs from having access to their client's medical records and from maintaining a bedside presence.  PHCAs will be threatened with liability suits. Attempts will be made to assert that PHCAs are actually practicing medicine after all, and therefore their activities must fall under the same constraints as "real doctors."  If any of these attempts take root, the PHCA movement will likely die on the vine.

The ultimate outcome will depend on one thing.  It will depend on whether patients finally understand what is going on.  It will be much more difficult to publicly attack PHCAs than it is to attack retainer practices.  It will be, much more blatantly, a naked assault on a patient's right to hire a private, personal consultant on healthcare matters. The whole point of creating this new profession, of course, is to move the doctor-patient relationship - rather, the PHCA-client relationship - to a new realm, outside of the current stifling system, there to allow that relationship to flourish again, unencumbered by all the things designed to encumber it where it resides today. When all the great powers argue that such a thing is bad, at the very least they will be finally tipping their hand, and revealing who they really are.

If patients at last understand the stakes, and if they become sufficiently outraged at a crass attempt to eliminate what ought to be a simple consumer's right (not to mention a simple patient's right), then all those powerful forces will be vanquished.  For an aroused public will be invincible.