About the project
The Lucidicus Project encourages young people entering the medical profession to examine the moral and economic foundations of individual rights and capitalism. The project was founded in 2005 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Our mission is to provide the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit to medical students across the United States and around the world.
Why such a philosophical approach?
We take a philosophical approach because philosophy plays such a crucial role in human events. An individual's philosophy—whether he holds it implicitly or explicitly—is his fundamental guide to life. It is ultimately what helps him choose his values and courses of action. For future doctors, one's philosophy influences the personal and professional choices one makes. For instance, do you accept new regulations in your field, or do you reject them? Do you wish to practice medicine in a free society, or in a society directed by government officials?
So what is the fundamental problem in healthcare today?
History shows us that central planning is disastrous to any country and any industry. Economics explains why certain systems inevitably lead to rationing, lower quality, longer waiting times, rising expenditures, and other undesirable consequences. Philosophy pinpoints the principles at work in this unfortunate chain of cause and effect. These are facts. Yet "experts" continue to call for the expansion of the very regulations, restrictions, and social programs that are the cause of our healthcare malaise.
The purpose of government is to protect rights, but instead federal and state governments have instituted controls over trade, contracts, and voluntary associations, leading to market distortions and misaligned incentives. The Lucidicus Project helps students understand how government intervention, past and present, has created the problems we face in medicine today. 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 a self-sacrificial one (captured by the vague expression "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 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 government control is needed in order to 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. Applying the ideas of rights and free trade to medicine, we get a scenario in which those who produce medical goods and services are free to compete with other producers to earn the business of patients. Under capitalism, doctors would be free to practice medicine as they see fit, not as government officials working from "national guidelines" say they ought to.
Patients, of course, benefit most of all. They benefit from the boom of human ingenuity and capital investment as new medicines, procedures, and facilities are developed and constructed. Patients also benefit tremendously from the increased competition in goods and services, as they would be free to purchase and patronize as they wish, without government officials restricting access or enforcing mandatory waiting periods.
How can I learn more?
The books and materials in the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit introduce rights, capitalism, and other important ideas in a way that most medical students can relate to. The Lucidicus Project provides these kits to medical students free of charge.