What does The Lucidicus Project do?
The Lucidicus Project encourages young people entering the medical profession to examine the moral and economic foundations of a free society. Our primary activity is to provide the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit to medical students free of charge. We also publish brief Editorials that comment on current concerns in both the popular arena and the health policy academic literature.
What does philosophy have to do with medicine?
Philosophy deals with the broadest abstractions and principles that a person needs in order to live. In that sense, it is inextricable from any subject. Philosophy has implications for medicine at a number of levels. Take, for instance, the fact that cures and medical devices generally do not spring up in nature, ready-made for human use. They cannot be brought into existence merely by wishing for them to exist or by passing laws to say that they ought to exist. (This is an example of a connection between medicine and the branch of philosophy called Metaphysics, which deals with the nature of the universe.) Furthermore, medicines and health services must be created and provided by someone—someone who engages in scientific, reality-oriented reasoning in order to make them happen. (This thought process requires a certain view of knowledge, which is also a concern of philosophy.) It takes a person who is persevering, proud, and goal-oriented in order to make such discoveries and breakthroughs. (This has implications for defining a code of ethics.) Finally, because the decisions that go into producing these cures must be made with science and nature in mind, not other men's wishes, hopes, or threats, one must be free to think and act. (This freedom requires a certain political system.)
This is just a sample of some of the connections between philosophy and medicine. There are many more.
What is the fundamental problem in medicine today?
In many countries, including the United States, stakeholders in the healthcare industry are artificially put at odds with each other through regulations, restrictions, and social programs created by the government. Doctors in particular are forced to conform to the will of officials rather than being left free to use their own professional judgment.
History has shown that central planning is disastrous to any country and any industry, but the practice is especially lethal in the field of medicine, where forgone tests or equipment shortages can have irreparable outcomes. Economic theory explains why single-payer systems lead to rationing, lower quality, longer waiting times, rising expenditures, and other undesirable consequences. And philosophy helps pinpoint the important principles involved in this unfortunate chain of cause and effect—one being that care deteriorates when the independent judgment of doctors is interfered with.
The Lucidicus Project argues that the problems in medicine today are the direct result of past and present intervention by the government. Rather than protecting individual rights as it properly should, federal and state governments institute controls over trade, contracts, and voluntary associations. The government further distorts markets through taxation, tax credits, deductions, and incentives. At the economic level, these interventions ultimately cause prices to rise and quality to decline. At the clinical level, government-instituted reimbursement schedules and treatment guidelines supplant the judgment of doctors with that of central planners, causing important medical decisions to be made according to what is good for the state rather than what is good for the patient.
How is this perpetuated?
What makes the encroachment of state-run medicine possible is that doctors, by and large, are not philosophically equipped to defend themselves. They are told—and many believe—that the only proper motive for entering medicine is to help others. As a result, those who enter medicine for the self-motivated reasons of intellectual challenge, love of the field, and financial reward are made to feel a profound guilt over any material success they have achieved. This technique of inducing guilt gives the moral high ground to those in society who demand self-sacrifice and submission. Unable to advocate for their own rights, doctors come to accept and invite further intrusion into their field under the mistaken premise that such measures will achieve prosperity or "social justice."
What is the alternative?
The alternative is to allow doctors (and other producers of goods and services) to practice their trade freely, without demanding that their interests—or anyone's—be sacrificed to the service of anyone else. Politically, it means that rights are respected. Economically, it means that goods are traded voluntarily and to the mutual benefit of each trader. Applying these principles to medicine, it means that those who produce medical goods and services are free to compete with other producers to earn the business of as many or as few patients as they can, and it means that doctors are left free to practice medicine as they see fit. Under capitalism, individuals are not forced to substitute for their own judgment the countless (and self-defeating) requirements of federal or state administrative committees, reimbursement schedules, and performance guidelines.
Everyone benefits from this arrangement, patients most of all. They benefit from the flood of human ingenuity, as new medicines and procedures are developed and marketed for their use. And they benefit from being free to purchase or trade for whatever services they choose, without government officials restricting access or enforcing mandatory waiting periods.
How can I learn more?
The case for capitalism rests on a foundation of rights in politics, rational egoism in ethics, reason in epistemology, and reality in metaphysics. It is not merely a conglomeration of polemics against other systems. The materials in the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit introduce these ideas in a way that most medical students should be able to relate to. The Lucidicus Project provides these kits to medical students free of charge, so that they can consider the merits of the argument on their own, with no outside pressure or strings attached.
