In a recent column, Jack Bernard, a self-described “Republican” retired health care executive, was “disconcerted by the ideological free market rigidity” of Republican presidential candidates as it regards health care.

The retired “Republican” executive, among other things, decried Rep. Michele Bachmann’s alleged tarring of ObamaCare as a “socialized medicine plot.” His solution is simply “to copy the health care of other developed (socialized) nations” and use more “regulatory authority to cover everyone and hold down costs.”

Ignored by policymakers and purported leaders of organized medicine, there is in Georgia, on the books since 1909, a law banning the “corporate practice of medicine,” which precludes any licensed practitioner (physician, chiropractor, optometrist, dentist, etc.) from selling his practice to a medically unlicensed entity. The law makes sense...otherwise what good is a license? In Georgia, that law has been invoked twice — the last time in 1963 when an optometrist sold his practice to Pearle Optical and then proceeded to go work for them on a salary.

Because of the recent decline in our health care system, today's physicians practice in a "medical gulag" and suffer from a "siege mentality." The reasons for this, as learned from examples in both ancient and recent history, are the topics for this unique collection of essays which are divided into five sections: "lessons from history"; "medical ecology"; "towards collectivism in medicine"; "the role of public health"; and "managed care, corporate socialized medicine and medical ethics." The author, Miguel A.