If physicians are *allowed* to provide private health care without insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, one more thing is essential to their well being: exemption from Title II of HIPAA.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. And *mandatory* compliance with these standards by everyone practicing medicine.
Despite what this says, in practice it means that all doctors must keep patient records in a standardized electronic format that can be accessed at will by numerous government agencies and others.
It totally eliminates the “doctor-patient privilege”, and cleared the path for single payer national health care.
N.B.: Many Republicans supported this law, so have to be considered as untrustworthy to oppose Obamacare. They *want* socialized medicine.
In any event, if private physicians, who take neither insurance, Medicare or Medicaid patients, want to continue to be free, they must someone get exemption from Title II of HIPAA.
I was thinking along those same lines regarding HIPAA and I bet the more liberal states (to begin with) will require participation in government insurance programs as a condition for a license to practice