An analyst at a free-market think tank has come up with a list of changes in U.S. laws and regulations that could make the health care market friendlier toward health savings accounts and other personal health accounts.[@@]
State and federal lawmakers should encourage qualified doctors to auction their services off through Web sites, according to Derrick Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas.
Policymakers also come up with malpractice standards for e-mail consultations, so that doctors feel free to communicate with patients through electronic mail, and policymakers should further encourage doctors to sell their services through the Internet by easing restrictions that now require doctors to see patients face to face before making treatment recommendations, Herrick writes in a review of the "consumer driven" health care movement.
