Healthcare > Health Care

Do You Really Want Washington As Your Doctor?

You didn’t choose them and you don’t want them, but they control your medical decisions nonetheless.

Deane Waldman | May 16, 2026

Why is the federal bureaucracy your “doctor”?  You didn’t choose them. You don’t want them. Yet, by third parties following their stringent regulations, Washington makes all your medical as well as financial decisions, not you and not a doctor of your choice. What happened to your medical freedom (autonomy) that is supposedly protected by law? What is going on in U.S. healthcare?

You get to see the doctor when a scheduling program decides, not you and not even your assigned doctor. The program puts you at the back of a long line. Average maximum wait time in 2022 was more than four months for an appointment with a general practitioner. Americans are literally dying waiting in line for care.

Which doctor you eventually see is decided by a health plan contract, not chosen by you.

How long you spend with the doctor is determined by efficiency benchmarks on the doctor’s clinical scorecard. The more efficient physician sees more patients per day, therefore necessarily spending fewer minutes with each one.  So, he or she spends as little time as possible with you.

What medications you receive are determined by a pharmacy benefits manager based on a “fail first” approach. The doctor is limited to prescribing drugs from a list of the lowest risk, least effective, and cheapest drugs. After you take the medicine for a while and the drug fails, the doctor may choose from a second tier of drugs: stronger, some greater risks  of adverse effects, and more expensive.  When the second drug fails, he may go on to a third tier, where the drug he or she wanted in the first........

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