Hello, Dr. Keith Smith with you here on behalf of the Free Market Medical Association (FMMA), thank you for joining me.

I’m asked from time to time about how the free market movement is progressing. It’s progressing beautifully, thank you. Hospitals, imaging centers, surgery centers and groups of physicians are increasingly jettisoning their relationship with the big, price-scamming carriers. They are dealing with patients directly, in an honest and price-transparent way.

I’m also asked, “What scares you the most at this point?” or “What could derail this movement?” My standard answer, and one that I would like to give you and explain, is this: The only thing that scares me at this point is that someone in government will try to help, because they screw everything up after all.

Here is one example of what government considers, on a state and federal level, from time to time: mandating price transparency.

This is a bad idea, I believe, for a couple of reasons. A mandate of price transparency will simply afford a legislator the opportunity to sell or auction off exemptions. Even worse, it will afford the legislators the opportunity to redefine price transparency to the benefit of the cronies who want to avoid price transparency, all the while saying that they are price transparent.

I wanted to explain my objection to mandating price transparency and I wanted to do it on the record so that you could refer to it from time to time when you hear this come up.

I would like to encourage all of you watching to consider what proves to be a truly phenomenal lineup at the FMMA conference next month here in Oklahoma City. The details are at FMMA.org

I hope to see you all there, thank you for joining me.