The Police State of Medicine (July/August 1998)
Article Type: Correspondence
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
October 7, 1997
Dear Dr. Annis:
[Regarding "The Transformation of Medical Ethics Through Time" (Medical Sentinel, Vol. 3, # 1-2, 1997) which I gave in part as a speech to the American Society of Dermatology (ASD) last year in San Antonio, Texas]... I admit I was highly critical of the AMA and organized medicine. Unfortunately, it is all true and I wish I did not have to say it. Sadly, I have it all well documented. In fact, most of it is quite detailed in my new book, Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine.
One only has to see where we stand today in medicine, the demoralization of physicians, the deterioration in the quality of care with managed care, the general devastation that government in "partnership" with the medical politicians of organized medicine "in the new...
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Article Type: Correspondence
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
Dear Editor,
In an era when corporations are practicing medicine illegally by hiring colleagues who lease their licenses, I have to disagree with the Michigan State Medical Society (MSMS) that broader immunity to peer reviewers will improve the system. The MSMS must oppose the legislative intention to extend immunity to non-governmental entities, as far as peer reviewers are concerned.
A principle behind governmental immunity is that the government acts for the good of all. However, when peer reviewers act, they act in the majority of the cases, on behalf of a business, whether a hospital, an HMO, a group practice, health plan or physician network. They act not for the good of all but for the good of a particular entity that has the resources to hire them and the will to fire peer...
Article Type: News and Analysis
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
New Medicare E&M Service Documentation Requirements
Apparently the AMA leadership is a bit out of touch with the views of the rank and file AMA membership. At the interim AMA meeting in Dallas recently, the delegates were expressing "physicians" strong concerns with documentation guidelines the Association is crafting with the Health Care Financing Administration" ("House Voices Concern with Rules on E&M Documentation," AMNews, Dec. 22/29, 1997, p.3). The AMA leadership courted HCFA, and now AMA members have, to their shock and horror, awakened to find this great big ugly thing in bed with them. Delegates now recognize that documentation errors might be viewed by HCFA as evidence of fraud, that corrective action is needed against what they view as "excessive documentation...
Article Type: President's Page
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
When Bill and Hillary Clinton moved into the White House arrogance took on a new dimension. At the very least, we have abject socialists in the highest office of the land: One elected; the other on the former's coattails. Here we have a husband and wife team who are champions of a political philosophy our country had fought against and defeated in two world wars and a cold war. Bill Clinton's closest friends during his developmental years appear to have been Fabian Socialists. In Europe, an elderly woman (FOB [friend of Bill's] from the 1960s) embracing him at a dinner for dignitaries is identified as one of the founders of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party.
With Bill and Hillary and company, Arkansas cronyism moved en masse to Washington, D.C. Despotism reached new heights. The highest...
Article Type: Editor's Corner
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
The AMA is proud to support this historic piece of legislation[Kassebaum-Kennedy bill] and extends to all who joined our effortsto have it enacted a heart-felt "thank you." Daniel Johnson, AMA President August 2, 1996
The AMA does officially support junkyard dogs,but as long as they are FBI agents. Kirk B. Johnson, General Counsel of the AMA, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate, May 25, 1994. (Mr. Johnson resigned in the wake of the Sunbeam fiasco in December 1997.)
In the Winter 1997 issue of the Medical Sentinel, I wrote, "those of you who may find false solace in blissful ignorance concerning the steps being taken by government towards the criminalization of medicine and/or find comfort in the thought the AMA may have mollified the stern wording...
Article Type: The Constitution - Plain and Simple
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
In a business or organization, an industrious person with ability and ambition may, by hard work, rightfully gain a position of authority over others who voluntarily submit.
But in this world, there are those who have an insatiable, inordinate desire to have power over and control of others without their permission. Such a person may resort to direct, one-on-one violence to gain his goal. Of course, in this situation there is the risk the intended victim may be the victor! Or, the aggressor may increase his odds by forming a gang to satisfy his lust for power. Tyrants throughout history have resorted to this tactic. In most areas of the civilized world, laws forbidding plunder stand in the way.
However, as Frederic Bastiat pointed out in The Law in 1848, the slickest way to overlord...
Article Type: Book and Video Review
Issue: July/August 1998
Issue Number: 4
No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. Magna Carta, par. 39
No More Wacos --- What's Wrong With Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It
You're probably wondering what these titles are doing in a medical review section. Unfortunately, government is an increasing presence in medicine as this issue of the Medical Sentinel graphically illustrates. And the federal, as well as state government, has increasingly, because of politics, become our adversary. This adversarial relationship can be illuminated by studying a non-medical branch of the federal government. The quasi-medical branches, such as Medicare, and...
The Oath of Hippocrates
The Cancer Risk from Low Level Radiation: A Review of Recent Evidence...
Vandals at the Gates of Medicine — Have They Been Repulsed or Are They Over the Top?Special Issues
- Medical Ethics (March/April 1998)
- The Police State of Medicine (July/August 1998)
- The Modus Operandi of Managed Care (January/February 1999)
- Socialism, Euthanasia, and the Right to Health Care (July/August 1999)
- Vaccines, Viruses, and Chronic Illnesses (September/October 1999)
- Futility of Care and the “Duty to Die” (November/December 1999)
- Vaccine Scene 2000 — Infectious Diseases and Immunizations (March/April 2000)
- Lawyers, Public Health, and Labor Unions (May/June 2000)
- Medicine as a Tool of the State — Cuba (September/October 2000)
- Doctors and Guns (Part I) — A Failure of the Public Health Model (November/December 2000)
- Doctors and Guns (Part II) — A Failure of the Public Health Model (Spring 2001)
- Controversies in Clinical Medicine (Fall 2001)
- Bioterrorism in Our Own Backyard (Winter 2001)
- Neuropharmacology and Behavior (Spring 2002)
- Individually-based Medical Ethics vs Population-based Bioethics (Summer 2002)
- Medical Liability Crisis and Tort Reform (Fall 2002)
- Vignettes in Medical History (Winter 2002)
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