How Medicare Creates Barriers We Don’t Need

As an ophthalmologist with more than three decades of experience, I swore an oath to always put my patients first. The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath, written in 1964 by the former dean of Tufts University School of Medicine, where I currently teach, reads in part, “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.”

I take this oath seriously — which is why I’m worried that federal Medicare policies are making it harder for doctors to use safe, effective drugs that patients...