• The Galen Institute, Grace-Marie Turner President, galen.org founded in 1995 to promote an informed debate over free-market ideas for health reform. Grace-Marie has been instrumental in developing and promoting ideas for reform to transfer power over health care decisions to doctors and patients.  She speaks and writes extensively about incentives to promote a more competitive, patient-centered marketplace in the health sector.
  house-chairman-calls-for-obamacare-watchdog
• The Mercatus Center at George Mason University (mercatus.org) is a strong advocate for accountability in government. Maurice McTigue, QSO, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, a former Member of Parliament and cabinet minister in New Zealand, is now director of the Mercatus Center’s Government Accountability Project.
• Pacific Research Institute, (pacificresearch.org) Sally C Pipes, President and CEO.
  Obamacare Bloats U.S. Healthcare System

To read the rest of this column, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/org.asp

• The Heartland Institute, heartland.org, Joseph Bast, President, publishes the Health Care News and the Heartlander. The weekly NIPCC Update, written on behalf of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) by Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Craig Idso, links to new reviews, posted on the NIPCC Web site, of research related to climate change and published in scientific journals. Subscribe here
• Greg Scandlen, is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and founder of Consumers for Health Care Choices, a non-partisan, non-profit membership. Greg Scandlen, President of Consumers for Health Care Choices, talks about the           ways that innovative health care products like consumer controlled health insurance is making health care more      The Crown Jewel of ObamaCare Failures
• The Council for Affordable Health Insurance, cahi.org/index.asp, founded by Greg Scandlen in 1991, where he served as CEO for five years, is an association of insurance companies, actuarial firms, legislative consultants, physicians and insurance agents. Their mission is to develop and promote free-market solutions to America’s health-care challenges by enabling a robust and competitive health insurance market that will achieve and maintain access to affordable, high-quality health care for all Americans. “The belief that more medical care means better medical care is deeply entrenched . . . Our study suggests that perhaps a third of medical spending is now devoted to services that don’t appear to improve health or the quality of care–and may even make things worse.”
• The Independence Institute, i2i.org, is a free-market think-tank in Golden, Colorado. Linda Gorman is Director of the Health Care Policy Institute at the Independence Institute, a state-based free market think tank in Denver, Colorado. A former academic economist, she has written extensively about the problems created by government interference in health care decisions and the promise of consumer directed health care.
• The Foundation for Economic Education, fee.org, has been publishing The Freeman – Ideas On Liberty, Freedom’s Magazine, for over 60 years, with Lawrence W Reed, President. Having bound copies of this running treatise on free-market economics for over 50 years, I still take pleasure in the relevant articles by Leonard Read and others who have devoted their lives to the cause of liberty. I have a patient who has read this journal since it was a mimeographed newsletter fifty years ago. Be sure to read the current lesson on Economic Education.
• The Fraser Institute, an independent public policy organization, focuses on the role competitive markets play in providing for the economic and social well being of all Canadians. Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day on June 28, the date they stopped paying taxes and started working for themselves. Log on at fraserinstitute.ca for an overview of the extensive research articles that are available. You may want to go directly to their health research section.
• The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, President, is a rich source of free-market materials, probably the best daily course in economics we’ve seen. If you read these essays on a daily basis, it would probably be equivalent to taking Economics 11 and 51 in college. Please log on at mises.org to obtain the foundation’s daily reports. You may also log on to Lew’s premier free-market site to read some of his lectures to medical groups. Learn how state medicine subsidizes illness or to find out why anyone would want to be an MD today.
• CATO. The Cato Institute (cato.org) was founded in 1977, by Edward H. Crane, with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. It is a nonprofit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato’s Letters, a series of pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Mission: The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Ed Crane reminds us that the framers of the Constitution designed to protect our liberty through a system of federalism and divided powers so that most of the governance would be at the state level where abuse of power would be limited by the citizens’ ability to choose among 13 (and now 50) different systems of state government. Thus, we could all seek our favorite moral turpitude and live in our comfort zone recognizing our differences and still be proud of our unity as Americans. Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies. Read his bio, articles and books at www.cato.org/people/cannon.html.
• The St. Croix Review, a bimonthly journal of ideas, recognizes that the world is very dangerous. Conservatives are staunch defenders of the homeland. But as Russell Kirk believed, wartime allows the federal government to grow at a frightful pace. We expect government to win the wars we engage, and we expect that our borders be guarded. But St. Croix feels the impulses of the Administration and Congress are often misguided. The politicians of both parties in Washington overreach so that we see with disgust the explosion of earmarks and perpetually increasing spending on programs that have nothing to do with winning the war. There is too much power given to Washington. Even in wartime, we have to push for limited government – while giving the government the necessary tools to win the war. To read a variety of articles in this arena, please go to stcroixreview.com.
• Hillsdale College, the premier small liberal arts college in southern Michigan with about 1,200 students, was founded in 1844 with the mission of “educating for liberty.” It is proud of its principled refusal to accept any federal funds, even in the form of student grants and loans, and of its historic policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity. The price of freedom is never cheap. While schools throughout the nation are bowing to an unconstitutional federal mandate that schools must adopt a Constitution Day curriculum each September 17^th or lose federal funds, Hillsdale students take a semester-long course on the Constitution restoring civics education and developing a civics textbook, a Constitution Reader. You may log on at hillsdale.edu to register for the annual weeklong von Mises Seminars, held every February, or their famous Shavano Institute. Congratulations to Hillsdale for its national rankings in the USNews College rankings. Changes in the Carnegie classifications, along with Hillsdale’s continuing rise to national prominence, prompted the Foundation to move the College from the regional to the national liberal arts college classification. Please log on and register to receive Imprimis, their national speech digest that reaches more than one million readers each month. Choose recent issues.  The last ten years of Imprimis are archived.
• The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPSonline.org), The Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943, representing physicians in their struggles against bureaucratic medicine, loss of medical privacy, and intrusion by the government into the personal and confidential relationship between patients and their physicians. Be sure to read News of the Day in Perspective: Don’t miss the “AAPS News,” written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site which provides valuable information on a monthly basis. Browse the archives of their official organ, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, a neurologist in New York, as the Editor-in-Chief. There are a number of important articles that can be accessed from the Table of Contents.
• The AAPS California Chapter is an unincorporated association made up of members. The Goal of the AAPS California Chapter is to carry on the activities of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) on a statewide basis. This is accomplished by having meetings and providing communications that support the medical professional needs and interests of independent physicians in private practice. To join the AAPS California Chapter, all you need to do is join national AAPS and be a physician licensed to practice in the State of California. There is no additional cost or fee to be a member of the AAPS California State Chapter.
  Go to California Chapter Web Page . . .

        Bottom line: “We are the best deal Physicians can get from a statewide physician based organization!”

• PA-AAPS is the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the country. Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine. We welcome all physicians (M.D. and D.O.) as members. Podiatrists, dentists, chiropractors and other medical professionals are welcome to join as professional associate members. Staff members and the public are welcome as associate members. Medical students are welcome to join free of charge.

Our motto, “omnia pro aegroto” means “all for the patient.”

• AAPS FLORIDA CHAPTER
• The Florida Legislature has once again made doctors the target of inappropriate government and corporate control of medicine. Sadly, the Florida Medical Association (FMA) has betrayed Florida doctors (again) by helping the legislature hurt physicians and ultimately their patients. The FMA actively supported legislation that prevents doctors from directly billing patients for the care they provide in emergency rooms and hospitals – even when the doctors have no contract with the patient’s insurance company. Florida law will now forbid them from billing patients seen at hospitals in nearly all circumstances. The Florida Medical Association repeatedly went on the record to support passage of the legislation that will impose up to $10,000 in fines, disciplinary action and possible criminal prosecution upon doctors that dare to simply collect payment for their services. The end result will be that insurance companies will have all the power as doctors lose substantial leverage in negotiating contracts with insurance companies. Politicians sold the law as a way to stop what they dubbed “surprise” hospital bills while inaccurately labelling it as “balance billing” for political purposes.

Go to: WWW.FLAAPS.ORG

• AAPS TEXAS CHAPTER

The Texas Chapter of AAPS held its first official meeting May 21, 2016.  The chapter elected officers and board members and approved the chapter’s bylaws.

Texas needs a strong, conservative physician in the Senate who will be willing to stand up against the status quo in the face of encroaching government control of the practice of medicine. . Dr. Buckingham, endorsed by AAPS, succeeded in making the runoff for the senate race in Texas SD24! She is prepared to tackle head-on the problems faced by private physicians and work to restore the integrity of the patient-physician relationship

Please follow at http://www.texasaaps.org/

• AAPS ARIZONA STATE CHAPTER

The AZ Senate Committee of the Whole (COW) gave the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact bill, HB 2502, a “Do        Pass as Amended”         (DPA) recommendation.  There are several good things in the amendment:
It prohibits board certification from being required for licensure through Arizona’s existing licensing process.
It directs the Arizona Medical Board to develop its own expedited licensure process for physicians wishing to avoid          Compact licensure.

It prevents Compact licensure from being required as a condition of employment.

Read Arizona’s physicians’ struggle to avoid government control at http://www.azaaps.org/  

• ACCESS THE ELEVEN STATE CHAPTERS OF THE AAPS
• IF YOUR STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY IS PRO-SOCIALIZED MEDICINE ON WHICH BASIS THE AMA WAS FOUNDED, CONSIDER AFFILIATING WITH THE AAPS WHICH SINCE 1943 HAS BEEN WORKING TO PREVENT THE INTRUSION OF GOVERNMENT INTO THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. THIS IS NOW A CRITICAL ENDEAVOR.

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS