The 2014 Report by our American Health Legal Foundation (AHLF).
Thanks to your support, we continue to preserve private medicine!
It is up to us to save private medicine. No one else is going to save it – not the AMA, not Congress, and certainly not the Obama Administration. We are the only ones who will preserve freedom in medicine against the onslaught by ObamaCare, insurance companies, hospitals, Maintenance of Certification (MOC), and medical boards. With your support we can file more lawsuits.
Our legal strategy scored significant victories in 2014, thanks to your help. Now we have an excellent opportunity to accomplish even more in 2015. Your generous tax-deductible support of our legal efforts is what keeps private medicine alive. Here is a partial summary of what we achieved in 2014, and how we can build on it in 2015:
1. Stopping ObamaCare. At one of our AAPS conferences, an AAPS member suggested suing the Obama Administration for its unlawful changes to ObamaCare without congressional approval. And so we did. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) expressly states that the Individual Mandate should go into effect only at the same time the Employer Mandate goes into effect. But Obama is imposing the Individual Mandate without the Employer Mandate, shifting the costs and burdens onto our individual patients. We sued to stop this.
Lo and behold, Congress later followed our lead when the House of Representatives passed a resolution to file a lawsuit similar to ours. Imitation is the finest form of flattery. But the initial law firm on their case was then forced by liberals to withdraw. We never withdraw or back down in our lawsuits for freedom in medicine.
Meanwhile, we recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review our own lawsuit against ObamaCare, which includes our claim based on the Origination Clause, and we filed an amicus brief in support of the challenge to the subsidies on the federal health insurance exchanges.
2. Maintenance of Certification (MOC) and Maintenance of Licensure (MOL). Physicians overwhelmingly oppose MOC and MOL, but we are the only ones suing to stop it. MOC chokes off the practice of good medicine, takes your time away from patients, and threatens fine physicians with a career-ending “failure” on silly exams. MOC is also a back door to imposing unjustified practice guidelines, too.
Enough is enough. We sued under antitrust laws and continue to pursue our federal lawsuit against the American Board of Medical Specialties, the lead perpetrator of this restraint of trade known as MOC and MOL. Now we are considering filing additional lawsuits against specific specialty boards. We seek long overdue scrutiny of the MOC exams, and how arbitrary they are.
Additional lawsuits to topple the MOC/MOL money-making scheme are needed. With your generous support, we can file more lawsuits in 2015 on this extremely important issue.
3. We had a big win in 2014 against sham peer review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a major case arising from New York. The hospital withheld information from the physician about how it had been more lenient in peer review towards others, after the hospital excluded him from the medical staff for arbitrary reasons like a drill bit breaking through no fault of the physician. We filed an amicus brief on appeal, and another large medical organization joined and supported our brief. (OVER)
The federal appellate court then ruled in our favor! Meanwhile, an injunction obtained by our counsel against a hospital to prevent it from reporting a sham peer review against an AAPS member to the National Practitioner Data Bank has remained in effect for more than two years.
4. We filed an amicus brief to help win the Hobby Lobby case before the U.S. Supreme Court, scoring a significant victory for freedom of conscience against ObamaCare. This established a religious right to reject certain regulations under ObamaCare, and helped limit government interference with our freedoms.
5. Our historic lawsuit against the Texas Medical Board wrapped up in 2014, establishing a clear right of AAPS to sue any state medical board for violations of constitutional rights in the practice of medicine. Thanks to your support, our effort helped reduce the abuse of power by many medical boards that were watching this landmark case.
6. Our counsel also racked up a big win for out-of-network physicians in 2014, at the request and expense of an individual AAPS member who was being sued by Aetna for recoupment on payments dating back to 2006. After a three-week jury trial that Aetna was confident it would win, the jury rendered a unanimous verdict in favor of out-of-network status by the AAPS member. We hope to build on this victory in 2015 to ensure that the out-of-network status remains fully available to all physicians. The alternative would be catastrophic: price controls by insurance companies as they drive down fees, while enriching insurance executives.
7. The federal government will think twice now before prosecuting a physician for mistakes in his dictation, as it did to Dr. John Natale. We filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of him. A major state medical society liked our brief so much, it joined it. We are also exploring the possibility of filing a “coram nobis” motion in another case, to challenge a complete miscarriage of justice perpetrated by government in punishing that physician.
The bottom line is this: against all odds, AAPS is saving private medicine. No one else is going to do this, other than you and us. At a time when “organized” medicine does less and less for independent physicians, we are doing more. Thanks to your generosity and support, in 2014 our American Health Legal Foundation argued multiple cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals and continued our torrid pace of filing amicus briefs in precedent-setting actions.
With your increased tax-deductible support we can achieve even more for private medicine in the upcoming year! We are limited only by the level of your contributions. For a donation of $250 or more, we will send you a copy of one of the legal presentations at our conferences.
Let’s face it: who else will save the practice of private medicine, if not us? No one else can or will save our medical profession other than you and AAPS. We need your generous support to oppose the billions being spent to defeat private medicine. Please increase your donation to AHLF, so that we can win this battle!
We depend heavily on your tax-deductible donations to AHLF to enable us to expand our efforts beyond what we already do. In 2014 we achieved more for private medicine in court than any other medical organization. We will do even better in 2015 with your generous support.
Please take advantage of the tax deduction by giving your money where it counts: to AHLF. With your generous support, we can accomplish even more. Dollar-for-dollar, we strive to maximize the use of every single donation, and work to accomplish more per-dollar than any other organization. Thank you in advance for your generous contribution!
Contribute today: https://aaps.wufoo.com/forms/r7p9z1/
