30 medical students need our help

30 medical students need our help

The following is the transcript from a video I posted from the Free Market Medical Association. Learn more about the Free Market Medical Association annual conference, and the Benjamin Rush Institute online.

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TRANSCRIPT: Hello. Dr. Keith Smith with you on behalf of the Free Market Medical Association. Thank you for joining us in this video blog series. We’re very excited, as I told you in the last video, about our conference coming up next month. Please check out our website for details.

Many of you have emailed me and wondered, in the absence of attending, if there’s anything you can do to help. There actually is something and I’m going to pass it along to you. Whenever I speak to medical students, the first and the last (and sometimes in the middle) thing that I tell them is to never, ever go to work for a hospital. It is simply a matter of time once a physician becomes a hospital employee before they run into the horrible dilemma where they do what’s right for their boss, or they do something totally different – what’s right for their patient.

It is simply a matter of time before this dilemma arises and it is not a position any physician or their patient should ever face. So my message always to the medical students is: never go to work for a hospital.

This is very tough because the hospitals are, with all the money they have, on a huge buying spree. They are buying physician practices and they are purchasing the employment contracts of medical students just graduating from school or from residency. Many of the young people do not know there is an option that is anything different from being a hospital employee. What better place for them to learn otherwise than the Free Market Medical Association conference?

Last year, six students from the Benjamin Rush Institute attended our conference because of the generosity of their donors. These students will never go to work for a hospital. The Benjamin Rush Institute, which I’ve promoted before, is dedicated to instilling in medical students in residence the ideas of fee-for-service, private practice, free market medical models.

You can help! We have the six students who came last year and there are enough funds at the Benjamin Rush Institute for six to attend this year. We would like to see 30 come. Why 30? Because there are 30 students at the Benjamin Rush Institute who want to come who do not have the funds. With the travel and the lodging and the meal expenses of the conference, it costs about $1,000 for each one of these students to attend.

If you cannot attend, but you would like to do something worthwhile for the future of medical practice, you can help one of these young people attend.

Here is my personal check for $1,000 that I’m going to donate to the Free Market Medical Association. If you can’t afford that, send what you can. If you can send $250 or $500, keep in mind that we will use all of this money – all of this money – for scholarships to bring these students here.

Here is the address of the Free Market Medical Association at 13431 Broadway Extension, Suite 130, Oklahoma City 73114.

Again, all of this money will be used for scholarships to help young medical students come hear the free market message and to inspire them that there are alternatives to becoming very conflicted hospital employees.

Thank you for joining us. We will talk to you again soon.