I don't have a completely satisfactory answer when people ask me what we can do to combat the tyranny we are witnessing in this country, but one brave and principled Texas physician is showing how people can stand up.
Dr. Kristin Held of San Antonio, whom I've befriended on Twitter and grown to deeply admire for her vocal advocacy against Obamacare, has taken the next step in her battle -- our battle.
Last week, she wrote a letter to Aetna insurance company terminating her participation in its program because of unilateral changes she said the company had made to its contract with her.
In her letter, Dr. Held informed Aetna that "Obamacare, the 'law of the land,' contains ever-changing-at-the-whim-of-HHS, politically expedient mandates, rewards, penalties, rules and regulations with which I cannot rationally or morally treat my patients and run a practice, much-less interpret, implement, or comply."
She continued with something that cannot be said often and strongly enough, if for no other reason than President Obama will simply not acknowledge it and callously glosses over it, whether in his self-serving State of the Union speech or in his painfully evasive interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. "Millions of Americans," wrote Dr. Held," have lost coverage because of the healthcare law and must now shop on a defective, insecure government website and sign up for more expensive policies through Federal and State exchanges."
Next, she described how she only accidentally found out that the insurance company with which she had enjoyed a contractual relationship for years had changed the contractual terms in the middle of the stream without her knowledge, much less with her consent.
"Only by logging in as a prospective patient," said Dr. Held, "did my office manager and I discover that Aetna was selling plans for which I am a provider -- effectively selling my services without even asking, much less informing me that my services would be sold on such a site, under the auspices of new terms with which I will not comply." Bravo!
She said that "after the fact," she received a "form letter" informing her of the company's "new allowables." She told the company in no uncertain terms that she would not be treated this way.
"I will not sell my services under such terms," she wrote. "While treated as such, patients and doctors are not commodities worthy of such impersonal, inconsiderate, and cavalier treatment. We choose dignity and personal service over disrespect and form letters."
She went on to scold the company for "getting new business offering health insurance plans featuring (her) services with (her) consent under terms which are unacceptable to (her)."
In closing, she wrote, "It saddens me to think of the decreased access to care from actual physicians and the shockingly increased costs Aetna patients will now experience because of your choice to collude with big government rather than collaborate with patients and physicians."
Dr. Held wrote in her blog on Dec. 21, 2013: "Obamacare empowers a few political elites, their operatives, and cronies to do whatever they want to the American people on the false promise of access to 'free', 'quality' 'medical care', AKA tyranny-through-medicine. They write and rewrite the deceitfully-passed law for political expediency, power, and money; patients are an afterthought, an annoying impediment to their ultimate goal -- socialized medicine, the keystone in the arch of Socialism. ... Our current Federal government is the antithesis of all that composes American medicine and the sacred patient-doctor relationship."
Dr. Held is exactly right. This law was deceitfully passed, and patients are the last thing Obamacare's designers and supporters are concerned about. In their obsession to continue with this law's implementation, they are obliterating the nation's health care system, forcing millions off their plans and apart from their chosen physicians, and then disgracefully pretending it hasn't happened. They are ensuring that patients will have less access to and fewer choices of care, despite promising more of both, and that their health care costs are increasing, despite explicitly guaranteeing cost reductions.
Please don't assume that Dr. Held is exaggerating when she says that the goal of these statists is to impose socialized medicine on America. It's not deniable. They can no longer credibly say they are pushing this system for the reasons they initially claimed, because every one of those has proved to be false -- and they knew it ahead of time.
I watched a debate between Obama's radical friend Bill Ayers and Obama critic Dinesh D'Souza over the greatness of America. Guess which one touted America's greatness and uniqueness? D'Souza, of course, credited America's founding, and Bill Ayers claimed, essentially, that any greatness America possesses comes from its radicals and activists against the government.
Well, let's take a page out of the Ayers-Obama-Alinsky community organizing playbook and, like Dr. Held, exercise our own form of activism to fight the lawless tyranny of the current federal government. Except that when we engage in activism, as it was with Dr. Held, it will be within the law.
God bless Dr. Held for standing up to tyranny and fighting for her patients, her profession and the unique protections of God-given liberty enshrined in our Constitution.
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