Yet another example of the state’s blind hubris in believing it can “manage” complex systems through top-down edicts. The German plan to force patients to trudge through GPs as medical gatekeepers before reaching a specialist simply increases the layers of coercion and bureaucratic delay the state inflicts upon its subjects. They promise “efficiency” and “fairness,” but inevitably deliver longer waits, irritated patients, and overburdened doctors—an omnipresent feature of every public system shackled by central planning, as Hayek’s knowledge problem so clearly exposes.
The advocates—cowed citizen-consumers seeking more call centers and phone hotlines—tragically demonstrate how the state erodes individual initiative and creative solutions, channeling all demand into clogged, centrally rationed pipelines. When it inevitably fails (and it always fails), the answer is simply another layer of coercive structure—never a rollback of the disastrous intervention that caused the problem.
As Nozick argued, liberty means the right to choose—if a patient wants to consult a specialist directly, they should be free to contract with one without bureaucratic permission or ration cards. Instead, the German state seizes that choice, making an individual’s health contingent on bureaucratic algorithms and collective queues. There is zero respect for the autonomy or preferences of the individual; only the “needs of society,” as determined by the self-anointed healthcare commissars.
And let’s not forget Rand’s lesson: every human innovation—every improvement in medicine or scheduling—comes from the creative minds and voluntary cooperation of producers and consumers, not from government planners. This system doesn’t “solve problems,” it institutionalizes mediocrity, inefficiency, and the moral rot of dependency.
The solution is not more state-run hotlines or forced appointments. It is the immediate abolition of state control over healthcare: privatize, deregulate, and liberate the resourceful, voluntary solutions that only free individuals can invent. Anything less is the slow death of liberty, progress, and human dignity.