Monday, April 03, 2017

Attention Tennessee Physicians and Physicians Everywhere

Attention Tennessee physicians and beyond:
As you may be aware, the (anti-)Maintenance of Certification legislation (see House Bill HB 413) and Senate Bill (SB 298) is on the calendar on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in Senate Commerce and at 3:00 p.m. in House Health Subcommittee. This legislation is highly contested and being opposed by both hospitals and insurance companies. TMA is working hard to get this legislation passed, but they need your help!

We need you to come to the hearings on Tuesday to show legislators that PRACTICING physicians are firmly AGAINST making the unproven, time-consuming, and distracting ABMS Maintenance of Certification program a requirement to practice medicine in Tennessee. Having physicians in the hearings may mean the difference in what happens with this bill in the committees on Tuesday. As the bill is highly contested, the outcome is unknown. It may be amended and passed out, or it may be put off until next year. Without physicians in the hearings, they will not go well. The legislators need to see physicians present supporting this bill and following it closely.

When: Tuesday - Senate Commerce at 1:30pm in LP 12
House Health Subcommittee at 3:00pm in LP 30

If you have any questions about this or if you are able to attend, please let me know, and if you haven't already, please contact your representative and senator and let them know you support this bill. https://www.votervoice.net/TNMA/campaigns/50846/respond

Thank you for your help,

Nikki

Nikki Ringenberg, MPA
Senior Director of Membership and Grants
Nashville Academy of Medicine
3301 West End Ave, Ste 100
Nashville, TN 37203
615-712-6236 office
615-712-6247 fax

nringenberg@nashvillemedicine.org
www.nashvillemedicine.org
It is time to turn your gaze away from that computer screen and rise up!

Practicing physicians' right to work is being compromised by the inclusion of the ABMS MOC requirement in state legislatures across the country.

Physicians need to alert their colleagues in Tennessee and elsewhere about this effort to restrict the practice of medicine by the American Board of Medical Specialties and Federation of State Licensing Boards. Practicing physicians are not against continuing education, but against the corruption that the ABMS Maintenance of Certification program represents and it's anti-trust implications it has to the practice of medicine.

It is time to save the practice of medicine and physicians' ability to act autonomously on behalf of our patients without the threat of unnecessary corporate intrusions into health care delivery.

There is not much time for us to mobilize. Please spread the word.

-Wes

Addendum: Thanks to Meg Edison, MD for her letter to circulate: http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5a9a08b64c48d493e89cb8192&id=5fb2b96d5c

18 comments:

To the Tennessee General Assembly (and every State Assembly) said...

To Tennessee and every state, cut the MOC™ tethers (for patients and physicians) and make us all whole and free.

ABMS MOC™ (maintenance of certification) is falsely referred to as being voluntary.
But in fact, MOC™ is not voluntary at all, it is violatory.

MOC™ has morphed into a fraudulently prescribed mandate that is both violatory and onerous for physicians and harms a patient's right to care.

ABMS Maintenance of Certification™ has become so invasive and intrusive that MOC™ is now a buzzword for cronyism, corporate greed, and political power. That is why the ABMS' business partners - the payers, "quality assurance" stakeholders, and Wall Street investors - are lobbying to protect their financial interests so fiercely today.

For physicians and patients who oppose mandated MOC, it's all about quality of care and quality of time. For those who would oppose anti-MOC legislation, for them it's obviously all about increasing their revenues and putting a fat number for shareholders on the bottom line.

We sorely need anti-MOC™ legislation in every state and territory. Why? Because, simply put MOC™ is bad for physicians. MOC™ is bad for patients. But moreover, MOC™ is just bad for business in the US healthcare delivery system.

MOC™ contributes greatly to creating an under-supply of physicians. Many physicians fed up with the onerous useless ABMS™ requirements imposed by the ABMS™ and others leave the profession of medicine. Some candidates never enter medicine opting to do something else that is less stressful and restrictive. This makes us hire residency candidates from the international labor pool to fill American hospital house-staff jobs. Or other docs simply retire early diminishing the numbers.
Some docs might even move to a MOC-free state producing a lack in MOC indenturing states, thus producing an imbalance. And many docs just simply fail or don't do well on tests. Good competent doctors.

We have lost some of the best docs to all this messiness created by the ABMS™ - organizations that in the beginning were completely voluntary non-pecuniary companies supplying a simple test and creating some order to specialty medicine. And nobody has thoroughly studied what stress this lucrative ABMS™ MOC™ pathway puts on the system and on ABMS victims - real people with families and lives. Real patients who lose their doctors. Common sense tells us that it has not been good for anybody - the involuntarily imposed mandates associated with the ABMS MOC™ and the pseudo-quality assurance industry.

Fewer physicians creates a bottleneck in healthcare, a deficit of high quality service and makes patients wait longer in line. This is not unlike what happened to the VA with patients not receiving timely care. What happened to those patients? Many of them suffered or died.

In fact, the American Board of Medical Specialties MOC™ is so wrong for physicians and patients MOC™ has come to symbolize for the healthcare industry all that is unfair, excessive, overreaching and corrupt in trade and business practice.

The "quality assurance" industry has grown like a cancer over the past twenty to thirty years and has metastasized choking out money flow where it is needed most - at ground zero with the patients, who are getting less and less care for an ever-increasing premium and co-insurance fee.

Vote yes on anti-MOC™ legislation to protect physicians and patients in the United States. Keep the anti-MOC™ ball rolling from state to state that will smash through the chains that restrict physicians from giving the high quality care they wish to give to patients.

Untie the hands of physicians bound by excessive bureaucratic red tape that literally prevents conscientious professionals from doing their jobs.

Cut the MOC™ tethers and make us all whole and free.

Chorus said...

Physicians and Patients Need Legislative Relief

The American Board of Medical Specialties MOC mandate is mainly comprised of useless busywork and expensive fees imposed by a highly conflicted quality assurance industry in league with the ABMS.

The whole lucrative business has become overgrown with corruption and MOC has become a distraction from doing real continuing medical educational (CME)requirements for docs.

Physicians and patients need legislative relief.

Physicians need time free of distraction and restrictive coercive methods, such as ABMS imposes and currently mandates, in order to focus on the continuing medical education that is right for them - tailored to their particular specialty and unique practice needs.

Patients need their doctors to be free of these onerous burdens imposed by elite self-appointed ABMS bureaucrats, and their greedy businessmen calling the shots. Bureaucrat and businessman create a false mechanism of corporate control for the American Board of Medical Specialties member boards. They grab the money remaining out of touch with what is really needed.

Physicians and patients need legislative relief.

Hey that was our money you wasted or threw away! said...

ABMS' Most Wanted List

The MOC tragedy exists mostly because of the unwholesome power the American Board of Medical Specialties unnervingly wields over physicians and patients. This power structure is made possible by the outrageous money they avariciously want to keep in their clutches and grow through domestic and international expansionist aims.

Globalist goals and desire for greater political power has resulted in fractured relationships with US physicians as the non-profit business over-spends, divvies out huge sums for executives, pays for expensive retreats, travel and luxury vacations to Venice and other exotic destinations on the silk road to wealth and fortune. All this while the ABMS sets up for-profit subsidiaries like ABMS Solutions, hides money in foundations with secretive transfers, purchase luxury condos and say nothing about it, and other poorly disclosed real estate ventures.

While these mismanaged specialty boards numbering 24 operate with financial deficits and impunity from the law and any ethics sanctions, their overspending, tax avoidance, lobbying fees and losing businesses-on-the-side have necessitated improper programs like MOC that seek revenue repatriation (from all they squandered) and ineluctable but elusive international growth as a delusional balm for sore financial eyes.

Such an unhealthy lack of domestic focus, as we have witnessed ABMS conducting alienating invasions of US physicians' civil liberties as though American doc were a foreign enemy. We have followed other mayhem as well like the throw-away legal fees chasing down Puerto Rican physicians, including a first-responder to the Haitian earthquake crisis. More millions of $$$ lost from abusive behavior and malicious legal action. ABIM at its best - corrupt and evil to the core with its heinous intent and deeds.

And we have seen the ABIM send their investigators on quixotic paper chases as though every piece of paper flying in the wind was a dire threat - a castle they had to defeat. No need to pillory them for their false flag attempts, resultant warning from secretaries of state and costly legal actions leading to the war to end all wars. Their crazy old man Christine Cassel wanted and tried in vain to chase down through every state was out of the country in Thailand having his third heart attack. How much did all that cost, when a psychiatrist, theologian, or sympathetic heart specialist might have solved their questions saving millions more. Maybe even a pledge to clean up the ABMS corruption or a simple apology? What was it all for? Revenge from one of their own?

Only God knows. Or maybe the ABMS' mob friends could tell us. Or some of their other unsavory and indecent connections.

The ABIM/ABMS fools even sent their felonious smart expert on international terrorism, "Ariel", flying around the world as far off as Korea to defend the ABMS flag by seeking out easily-targeted foreign folks who were no essential threat to ABMS national or international security. Soft targets. No need to use invective on the ABMS when the ABIM CFO can see as clearly as we can that it was a waste of time and money to send on a wild goose chase their double-felon Mannes and his FBI honey in search of a man with a counterfeit board certificate half the way round the world. The 990 tax forms chalk it down to "other expenses".

It's all there in the annals of the testing/security industrial complex magazines and the dirty attorneys the ABIM and the ABMS employ to clean up undisclosed felonious action and even altering public records for furthering their highly conflicted business scams. All their malfeasance and missteps have taken a heavy toll on the ABMS finances and reputation. MOC is a largely a fabricated creation to fix their own greedy needs and hide their own financial malpractice and utter insensitivity to its clients and ABMS' unfailing negligence.

Anonymous said...

Overreach has been used as a political power ploy all too often as the ABMS medical cartel "continues to continue" as a punitive business involved in profit-seeking and adventurism - not charity and goodwill.

Physicians and patients do need relief from MOC as both patients and physicians are are in a delicate and vulnerable position in relation to the ABMS and its incessant growing political over-lording and intolerable corporate greed and abuse.

The delicate balance of the sacred patient-physician relationship continues to be violated by the ABMS' greedy executives and their instruments of abuse. (MOC)

Stand your ground; don't back down. said...

SB0298 ACTIONS DATE 04/04/2017

Recommended for passage with amendment/s, refer to Senate Calendar Committee Ayes 9, Nays 0 PNV 0

http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/Billinfo/default.aspx?BillNumber=SB0298&ga=110

Unknown said...

Thanks for the update Wes and all. State by state, case by case, we'll end this transparent and self-serving "MOC" process. Each practitioner should be able to decide for themselves where to spend their educational dollars based on their individual needs. Its time to end the near mandatory requirements to purchase proprietary materials, and unvetted testing, from an unelected and wholly private entity. I have no desire to subsidize: near 7 figure administrator salaries, mid 6 figure "assistants", luxury cars, luxury accomidations, investigators, litigation against other physicians, political parties and trips to the Four Seasons. Kudos to our colleagues leading the fight.

"The Sky is Falling" for Real on the ABMS said...

The end of mandatory MOC is near if physicians and patients stand shoulder to shoulder

I think we have reached a saturation point where we really can't go back to the status quo of being forced to do business as usual with the disgraced ABMS.

Any desperate ABIM mergers with ACP MKSAP sounds corrupt and horribly incestuous.

Maligned interference from special interests attempting to prevent what is right for American physicians, patients and the US healthcare system will not work. ABMS MOC is failing and fading.

Why? Because nobody believes in the ABMS propaganda anymore. We all see through the fake science and propaganda of the ABIM, ACP and ABMS. It's the Chicken Little Syndrome. "The sky is falling." "ABIM is working hard to get patients to trust physicians again." Oh my!

Well, now we know what all that ABIM Foundation money was spent on. Ruining the physician's reputations with a few slim pamphlets containing hard to stomach "literature" on the true nature of "professionalism".

The well has run dry for the ABMS as they spend half their time creating lies and the other half disseminating them.

http://www.choosingwisely.org/societies/american-college-of-physicians/

Anonymous said...


Nine Ayes, Zero Nays. It's pretty clear that others are listening and they ain't hearing the tired tune being played over and over by "dr" dickie baron's pitiful troupe.

Rise and Fall of the ABMS Cartel said...

The following list indicates the year each board was approved as an ABMS "Associate Member" starting with 1933 with “Associate Members” highlighted with an asterisk. [with ABIM historical highlights in brackets]

ABMS Members and "Associate Members" by year of "approval"

Founding Members 1933: American Board of Dermatology, American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Board of Ophthalmology, and American Board of Otolaryngology

1935 Additions: American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, American Board of Pediatrics, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, American Board of Radiology, and American Board of Urology

1936: American Board of Internal Medicine and American Board of Pathology,

1937: American Board of Surgery

1940: American Board of Neurological Surgery

1941: American Board of Anesthesiology and American Board of Plastic Surgery

1947: American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

1949: American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery and American Board of Preventive Medicine

1969: American Board of Family Medicine

[1965: just before the passage of Social Security Act of 1965, ABIM bylaws were altered by ABIM Chairman/ABMS President Thomas Brem, MD establishing the precedent for independent salaried executive positions without term limits transforming ABIM and other medical boards into potential political powerhouses, plus opening them up to dynastic partisan control and corporate influence.
This is the point when physician executives became groomed to be political puppets and slowly stroked to be corporate pawns. Executive MD's sold out their colleagues in exchange for secure bureaucratic positions, more money for less work, and political rank. This is historical fact without paint.]

*1970: "Associate Member" organizations were added. Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), National Board of Medical Examiners(NBME), American Hospital Association (AHA), and American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC)

1971: American Board of Allergy and Immunology, American Board of Nuclear Medicine, and American Board of Thoracic Surgery

*1973: Associate Member added: Council of Medical Specialty Societies (AMSS)

[1975: ABIM altered bylaws once more, this time to alter its critical 1986 date of administrative dissolution to be perpetual "in perpetuity"]

1979: American Board of Emergency Medicine

[1979: National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) formed]

[1986: ABIM set to dissolve administratively according to founding physicians' origianl 1936 bylaws (Walter Biering and eight other board members were all ACP,AMA members]

[1986: ABIM MOC conceived by Harry Kimball and others]

*1989: "Associate Member" The American Medical Association (AMA)

1991: American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics

Rise and Fall of the Quality Assurance Cartels said...

The Beginning of the End (Corruption, political upheaval and lead-plated ears)

[1999: National Quality Forum (NQF), a Hospital quality NGO receiving federal funding and stakeholder membership fees established by the Clinton administration, Christine Cassel, Janet Corrigan, et al] http://www.qualityforum.org/Shantanu_Agrawal.aspx

*2002: “Associate Members” Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)

*2004 “Associate Member” Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)

[2007-2008: ABIM appoints Richard Baron to board of directors accepting increasing roles and respsonsibilities. Baron was Ballard-Spahr's contact person in the lawsuit against FrontRunners. Florida DUI attorney Marc J. Wienstein. Weintsein and Jacobs helped ABIM's double felon Ariel B. Mannes, 'director of investigations' hired in 2008 to investigate and prosecute competing board preparation companies and physicians. See ABIM versus Arora Board Review lawsuit and ABIM versus Sarah von Muller and others.)

[2009: Drs Arora and Kachacourian had their houses raided by the ABIM, Ballard Spahr, and contracted federal marshals to seize material that might incriminating to them and 50 John Doe physicians. Thousands were violated and had their lives and professions impacted.]

[Christine Cassel appointed as science/medical advisor to Barack Obama 2009-2017]

[2010: Sara von Muller sued for violating her pledge of honesty by ABIM along with four other physicians in separate proceedings. 139 physicians were sanctioned for violating their pledge of honesty to ABIM. 2700 physicians who attended ABR courses were reprimanded in a dishonest trick to get coerced information (under duress and fear of sanction or civil suit) about Dr. Arora's courses.

[2010: Passage of the Affordable Care Act]

[2013: Dr. Richard Baron appointed as CEO/President of the ABIM and ABIM Foundation. Christine Cassel goes through the revolving door to head the NQF.]

[2014: Christine Cassel resigns from company boards under pressure as she is discovered by a Kaiser Permanente affilated Union boss and ProPublica for having egregious conflicts of interest. No charges were filed or sanctions by the medical boards. Medical licensure was not taken away. MACP stays intact and ABIM certificates still display on her office wall.

[2014: Dr. Salas Rushford sued for copyright infringement 5 years after discovery and nearly two years after being sanctioned.]

[2014: Dr Fisher, Charles Kroll and Kurt Eichenwald reveal ABIM financial and operational obfuscation, malfeasance and inexplicable tax irregularities. Of great concern, the fact that MOC was created due to severe downturn in revenues, while wasteful expenditures increased along with with increasing executive payouts and associated non-core mission expenses.]

[2016: AMA House of Delegates votes resolving that mandatory ABMS MOC should end]

[2017: Federal judge dismisses ABIM lawsuit against Dr. Salas Rushford as being time-barred. ABIM may have acted maliciously and has opened themselves up for counterclaims from Dr. Rushford and other physicians harmed by the ABIM from their ill-advised political witch hunts.]

The devil is into the details said...

In the spirit of compromise the Florida Medical Association has diabolically devoured all the important language favoring physicians in the Florida anti-MOC legislation. Compromise is not giving all the good stuff away and rewriting it to favor the insurance industry. Did someone give the horse some hay to make it go the other way. If so, it's lowdown politics and high finance at its worst.

Give the SB 1354 folks a call and the FMA to get the anti-MOC horse back on track. If they don't restore the original language of the bill I'd refuse to vote for such diabolical legislators and fire the FMA by refusing to pay their $450 dues.

"ABMS Maintenance of Certification™ industrial complex has become so invasive and intrusive that MOC™ is now a buzzword for cronyism, corporate greed, and political power. That is why the ABMS' business partners - the payers, "quality assurance" stakeholders, and Wall Street investors - are lobbying to protect their financial interests so fiercely today."

http://www.flaaps.org/fma-guts-moc-bill-proposes-state-moc-power/

May! said...

In the timeline above between 1989 and 1999 there was not much action at the ABMS, except the ABIM Foundation, which was secretly created for unknown reasons. So we have a major event, actually several related Foundation events including the creation of ICE, that ABIM did not announce, and even today does not want to fully discuss.

One can assume that the ABIM and the rest of the ABMS members and associate members at that time had a hand to play in conceiving, creating and utilizing the ABIM Foundation. All members and associates, even the late comers to the party, are co-conspirators of the ABIM scandal. Especially the ACP, which is not an associate member for reasons unknown to me, but first in line to benefit financially, such as the new proposal to use the ACP MKSAP as a third MOC pathway. Every action the ABMS has taken indicates a desire to create greater control over physicians and generate more revenue in doing so. Physicians are cash cows and objects, just as patient are objects to be controlled with their Choosing Wisely propaganda.

The ABIM Foundation is imo all about using the cash and investments and even receiving donations to maximize the return on the ABMS' chief service, which is to scam the patient and physicians in order to better serve their quality assurance cronies and their mutual private and public special interests.

The ABMS syndicate is an organization devoid of compassion for people.

Anonymous said...

MACRA is looking like a macabre payer plan to actually lower the quality of patient care by stealing even more time away from actual patient care. It is sadistic. Are they nuts. There is less time for everything related to care. Including limited access, I can't see as many patients. And it is going to force more physicians out of private practice. I'm not able to meet the metrics, as my RVUs have declined and don't meet the threshold. They are coming around every month with the numbers and graphs. How intimidating and now there is a strain in everyone's relationships with the managers and physician leadership. Some have already quit in frustration.

I'm employed, so the hospital is shooting themselves in the foot. Extra meetings at lunchtime when I'm usually catching up on notes. Now I'm staying late. They even want to hold same day emergency slots to meet a 10% threshold as one of the chosen metrics, and my practice has nothing to do with emergent situations. Just stupid. Lose even more money.

I am definitely looking at Oklahoma or some other MOC-free state just to reduce the stress. I have had it with MOC!

Can we include this asinine MACRA to the Anti-MOC state legislation! It is the dumbest idea that anyone ever came up with next to MOC and the FSMB registration requirements in some states. I refuse to go to any state that requires paying FSMB, just so they can put even more licensing/certification requirements and other restrictive thumbscrews on physicians.

Anonymous said...

The quality assurance cartel and the 'measuring mania' they invented, in order to keep themselves and their corporate partners in power and flush with cash, has created a 'bipolar' health system in the United States.

One health system for the rich comprising the one percent, and another system for everyone else. This one percent includes the over-compensated executive elites in the medical quality assurance cartel.

MOC, and the manic push to 'measure physicians to death' by the ABMS and the rest of their corrupt syndicate is a micro-economic trend, which clearly illustrates a larger thrust to use measure and standardization as a lever to create greater control of labor and resources, which not coincidentally, comes also with a punitive hammer to maintain power and money flow.

The measuring of quality and the (primarily) unaccountable certification industry it supports, has been growing and prospering by propounding the notion that knowledge and skill must be kept current by creating a system of educational "check-ins" or some other description of renewal through the creation and utilization of proprietary, often copyrighted, systems of re-certification. Part of the problem is these "check-ins" require that one uses the companies own proprietary test, because they have a monopoly in the market. Educational materials only meet approval once a business contract is struck between the associate members of the club. This creates more than the appearance that the system is rigged for smooth sailing and easy money, from those with little power to resist--especially so if re-certification is tied to employment and insurance payments.

In the case of the American Board of Medical Specialties these various forms of continuous voluntary "check-ins"--somewhat different in each of the 24 medical boards--primarily consist of poorly-thought-out busywork and paying a periodic fee.

Yet insurers and employers (with their often copy-pasted bylaws) require certification for most employment and insurance reimbursement. But the manic quality measurement system in healthcare has gone too far. Restrictive re-certification systems in healthcare barring employment and reimbursement without it, has pushed the certification system to the extreme edge and has created a stir of depressive mania in the minds and emotions of everyone involved. Except those whose paycheck or deferred kickback depends on the continuance of unfair mandates that penalize more than measure. MOC mandates penalize physicians and patients.

Any objective view of the situation would conclude that the medical industry and quality assurance organizations need to work together to not just put a band-aid on the wounds MOC has created, but to suspend re-certification as a requirement to remain certified indefinitely and focus on the certification process, which has fallen by the wayside with the distraction MOC causes for the quality assurance industry and the professionals that just cannot cope with the additional stress and demands.

Anonymous said...

Real world investigation reveals that the bulk of the quality assurance industry is a money scam that creates the illusion of greater quality. But what underlies the surface flow of green financial energy is a system of industrial spying, power-brokering, and endless possibilities for abuse of those who have appointed themselves to be the purveyors of quality control.

MOC is a boondoggle for the ABMS. It has created a bureaucratic nightmare and any and all MOC mandates must be cancelled.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. said...


It's good to size up the dog first and put together a "bullet-proof" winning strategy before you go biting into his leg. Is it only a billion dollar scrapper or a multi-trillion dollar killer?

Joking aside, to get anti-Moc legislation passed in most of the states is a winnable fight. There is time to get it done and also get it written into federal law with "repeal and replace".
It will be done. The legislation will only restore what was before. That is as it should be to have some things as they were before the corporate tentacles started cutting off the air to physicians and patients.
One would think that in a fair world, the ABMS would even be happy to help in this endeavor. It would be good for business relations and they could gain some trust back. As it is now the billion dollar scrapper is in big financial trouble with a 97% disapproval rating. They should go back to being a true charitable non-profit without the federal boons and "big tobacco" tax subsidies. Isn't pay-to-play illegal anyway! So, just don't pay.

https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html

Anonymous said...

MOC's slippery slope and the ABMS' nefarious cabal

Dr Baron's approval rating has been dipping even before he was appointed as CEO of the ABIM, and his rating has dropped to its lowest level since taking office in 2013.

After the public learned of Rich's obscene compensation package, financial obfuscation, continued stonewalling of real questions such as why the ABIM was
deceiving of the IRS for decades, and why they deceived physicians about their lobbying activities it has been a slippery slope for the whole of the ABMS medical specialties. Dr. Baron's deflections to questions about the ABIM Foundation's dubious state registrations and parking of profits/assets in 1989 through 1999 and again from 1999 to 2007, which gave candidates and diplomates further reason for pause.

When Kurt Eichenwald and Newsweek brought out many of the deceptive practices this national exposure showed just how corrupt the ABIM and the quality assurance cabal had become. Eichenwald presented clearly the huge financial losses from excessive executive profiteering and self-dealing.

The nation looked in shock at the deferred accounting as a way to mask the ABIM's real financial condition and the real reasons for MOC to be suddenly imposed on physicians and why MOC requirements became mandates by colluding with payers and hospitals. Dr. Fisher elaborated on this and how the NCQA, a private company, enforces certification and MOC by requiring insurers and hospitals to write language into their operations and bylaws that essentially restrains trade and contradicts the ABIM and ABMS claims that certification is voluntary.

Many claim this is racketeering and violates interstate commerce laws when the ABMS cabal conspires to create conditions that ensures their MOC money scam. Fisher hinted at and then clearly stated that all these mechanisms are used to control physicians. We tend to agree. Physicians were once a powerful respected and influential labor force in the United States. Now they have been co-opted by the very organizations that once helped make them powerful.

The medical boards have served to tie physicians hands and put them in a corner doing useless study and busywork, while paying outrageous fees. If a physician does not pay the ABMS they do not work or do not get paid. The medical boards have even been active in the demonization of physicians and sadly by direct violations of civil liberties the ABMS has been conditioning doctors to believe they have no civil liberties as servants of the public. They have become subservient to the quality assurance cartel and physicians have little recourse except to seek civil and financial relief through creation of protective legislation, suing in the courts or in acts of justifiable "civil disobedience".

Dr. Baron's deceitful methods of chilling freedom of the press, as was demonstrated by how he dealt with a top-ranked reporter with an international following, and his violatory attacks on Dr. Salas-Rushford in Puerto Rico, diplomates have been totally disgusted with the ABIM and its CEO. Even his executives have been jumping ship not wanting to risk their careers and legal entanglements after consulting with their own advisors and attorneys.

Pennsylvania medical society gave a vote of no confidence, essentially calling for Dr. Baron's impeachment. The AMA HoD called for the immediate cessation of mandatory MOC. Physicians and patients are equally harmed by MOC and demand for its immediate cessation.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Baron and the rest of the ABMS crowd ignores the legal implications of their nefarious and violatory actions. How long can this feigned stalemate on the part of the ABIM and ABMS to continue? In the chess match the pay-to play participants on the MOC team have been checkmated. Game over. Actually they cheated and all the judges know this, but right now are silent giving them a chance to do the honorable thing and withdraw. And yet still it seems the Rich Baron's of the ABMS cabal do not understand that the clock is ticking. They carry on as if there will be no consequences from the judges. They will be fined and held in contempt, and banned from ever playing again, because they have not played fairly.

When the ABIM and their quality assurance cabal have been exposed as cheaters and public frauds, what should be their next move? Right now their executives are in a state of catatonic denial and their goon squads stonewall and still continue to demand their pay-to-play money from everyone.

Dr. Baron and his ilk even use felons with their (unmasked) legal counsel and perhaps other proxies to threaten the Pennsylvania medical societies. Have they even the gall to disrupt honest grassroots movements to end the MOC suffrage movement by pedaling their concepts of unfair trade and commerce to legislative assemblies and committees.

Is Dr. Baron's cabal that foul as to risk exposing themselves again and again for who and what they really are with vain attempts to obstruct and demoralize those hard-working souls involved in the democratic process? Will we see even more unfair ex-parte contacts while physicians are working at ground zero saving lives. Will the ABMS cabal try to continue to chill first amendment rights?

Whatever they do to continue improperly pushing mandates surrounding MOC's pay-to-play revenue streams, they are all bad moves!