With your support, we broke our record for the most legal actions and victories for physicians. As other medical societies decline and do less and less, AAPS is doing more and more. Our legal actions are funded by your generous tax-deductible donations to our American Health Legal Foundation (AHLF), and with your increased tax-deductible support we can achieve even more for private medicine in the upcoming year!
Here’s a quick recap for you:
Stopping ObamaCare. AAPS has done more to stop ObamaCare than all other medical societies combined. We filed our own lawsuit against ObamaCare within a few days of its signature into law, and our lawsuit delayed the implementation of PECOS against physicians. Our case is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – only one step below the U.S. Supreme Court.
We have also filed more amicus briefs in other ObamaCare litigation than anyone else. We filed amicus briefs in the “freedom of conscience” challenges to ObamaCare, including the “Hobby Lobby” case. And our General Counsel helped an AAPS member who filed his own lawsuit challenging the employer mandate based on the Origination Clause; weeks later Obama then announced his delay of that mandate.
There’s more. Thanks to your support, in October we filed another, new lawsuit against ObamaCare based on how Obama is violating his own law with his numerous arbitrary exceptions and exemptions.
Maintenance of Certification (MOC) and Maintenance of Licensure (MOL). MOC is a money-making scheme that suffocates physicians and sometimes even destroys their practices. MOC forces us to spend hundreds of hours on senseless certification make-work, and pay thousands of dollars to enrich specialty board executives. And now recertification is being denied unless the physician’s practice complies with “guidelines” arbitrarily imposed by a specialty society!
With a shortage of doctors and an average of only 7 minutes available per patient, the increasing burdens of MOC must be stopped. And AAPS is fighting this rip-off scheme, and its inclusion as a condition of licensure.
In April, AAPS sued the ABMS in federal court to halt MOC. The more you can support us with donations, the more we can achieve with this federal lawsuit.
Beating Back Hospital Administration. Have you noticed how hospital administrators abuse their power over physicians? No other industry has so little accountability as hospital administrators, who pay themselves many millions of dollars to interfere with quality medical care. Independent physicians are being driven off hospital medical staffs. Sham peer review continues to be misused by hospital administrators to destroy physicians who stand up for private medicine.
With your support, AAPS has filed amicus briefs for good physicians whom hospital administrators attempt to destroy. Our General Counsel obtained a federal court injunction against a hospital to prohibit it from reporting a sham summary suspension to the National Practitioner Data Bank, and then he won another victory before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to ensure timely access by physicians to federal court when they are victimized by sham peer review.
Medical Boards. None of us can practice medicine if a state medical board unjustly takes away our license. Unfair revocations and discipline happen far more than other medical societies admit. Our landmark lawsuit against the Texas Medical Board exposed the problems there, and led to important reforms of medical board procedures, including an end to anonymous complaints. With your support we can halt the abuse of power by other medical boards that harass physicians.
Overzealous government investigations. Imagine the Feds jailing a physician for merely making mistakes in dictating his operative notes. Sound unbelievable? That is exactly what happened this past year in the case of United States v. Natale, and AAPS was the only one that filed an amicus brief support of the good physician. Our legal effort then led to several medical societies condemning this abuse of power by the government. With your support we can help take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, so that physicians do not fear prosecution based on mistakes in their notes.
And we are doing far more too, often on a confidential basis which we would never speak publicly about. At each of our AAPS gatherings, including our recent annual meeting in Denver with record-breaking attendance, we explain the most important legal developments.
Who else will save the practice of private medicine, if we do not? We need your generous support to defeat the massive, well-funded enemies of private medicine. Please increase your donation to AHLF, so that we can win this battle!
Your tax-deductible donation to AHLF will enable us to expand our efforts beyond what we already do. If we save medicine against the intense threats today, then this will preserve the medical profession for decades to come. Already we do more effective legal work than any other medical organization, but we can do still more with your generous donations.
We understand and counter the biggest threats to the medical profession today: ObamaCare, MOC, hospital administrators, medical boards, and overzealous government investigations. On each of these fronts and more, AAPS stands up against the encroachments on the practice of private medicine.
Don’t give more of your money to the government. Instead, take advantage of a tax deduction by giving your money where it counts: to AHLF! Thank you so much.
