• Increased fees: The compact allows the FSMB to drastically increase the fees it can collect as more states pass its legislation and more doctors take advantage of the streamlined process. A recent analysis found that, of 878,194 licensed physicians in the US, 79% of them held only one license. As another commentator put it, “Many dollars can be made by raising the number of active licenses.”
• Maintenance of Certification programs: The FSMB would require physicians seeking a license through the compact to participate in a credentialing process overseen by one of twenty-four approved medical specialty boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). While ABMS argues that its recertification process maintains high standards, many physicians see this as little more than a money-making endeavor—the American Board of Internal Medicine received more than $55 million in fees from physicians seeking certification—or as a way to screen out integrative doctors. Worse, these certifications are often used as a requirement for hospital employment.
• Lack of accountability: There is a stunning lack of accountability with the FSMB-created Interstate Commission to enforce the compact. While we’ve been critical of the actions of some state medical boards, at least there is some degree of process by which the public can weigh in when rules are created. But when one bad rule can affect at least seven different states, how can the public have any input? Considering FSMB’s record of enmity toward integrative medicine, we should be extremely wary of its legislation.
• Takes power away from the states: The FSMB claims its proposal “reflects the effort of the state medical boards to develop a dynamic, self-regulatory system of expedited state medical licensure over which the participating states maintain control through a coordinated legislative and administrative process,” and is therefore the “ultimate expression of state authority.” Such a claim, however, is frankly not credible—especially considering that the language of the compact clearly states that rules made by the Interstate Commission would have “the force and effect of statutory law in a member state.”

The points about expanding patient access to physicians also seem to be disingenuous. An observer put it this way:

If a doctor in Montana can now practice in Wyoming, some patients there may have access to another doctor. But, if the Montana doctor is spending time with Wyoming patients, then the doctor is spending less time with Montana patients. The net effect is likely to be close to zero. But, also notice that, if the Montana doctor had spare time there, then there is evidence of a surplus of doctors in Montana and not a shortage.

Let’s not forget FSMB’s close ties to Big Pharma. A few years ago we reported that the FSMB asked for $100,000 from the pharmaceutical industry to help create and distribute the organization’s new policy on pain medication to their 700,000 practicing doctors. The federation won’t say how much money it received from industry, but at the time estimated that it would cost $3.1 million for its campaign.
The main benefit of passing the compact, it seems, is not in improving the lives of physicians or expanding patient access to healthcare, but rather in lining the coffers of another unrepresentative bureaucracy. We must oppose this bad legislation.
State-based Action Alerts! Check below to see if your state has either 1) passed the compact or 2) has legislation pending, and send a message to your state representatives urging them to repeal or oppose the FSMB’s legislation. Please send your message immediately.
States where legislation is pending:
Maryland
Michigan
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Texas
Vermont
Wisconsin
 
States where the compact is enacted:
Alabama
Idaho
Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Montana
Nevada
South Dakota
Utah
West Virginia
Wyoming
 
Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

TPP a Disaster for Natural Health
Coca-Cola Scandal: Emails Prove Deception
“Agent Orange” Herbicide Pulled by EPA

The post Eleven States Join the Push for Medical Monopoly first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A recently published study in the American Journal of Physiology has shown that statins—anti-cholesterol drugs—are disrupting our stem cells.
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have the ability to create different kinds of cells (such as skin, muscle, or bone cells). They are central to the body’s ability to heal itself and also seem to be involved in the body’s aging process.
Dr. Reza Izadpanah, a stem cell biologist at Tulane and the lead author of the study, was quoted as saying,

Our study shows statins may speed up the aging process. People who use statins as a preventive medicine for heath should think again, as our research shows they may have general unwanted effects on the body which could include muscle pain, nerve problems, and joint problems [as well].

Even after a only a few weeks on statins, many patients begin feeling years older. Patients experience memory loss, muscle pain, diabetes, cataracts, liver dysfunction, diabetes, and fatigue.
Despite the long laundry list of negative side effects that have been linked to statin use, they are one of the most widely prescribed drugs in existence: one in four Americans are on this medication.
 

Doctors, Already Buried in Needless Paperwork, Face a New Avalanche of It

On October 1, new regulations go into effect that will expand the set of codes that doctors use to describe illnesses and injuries to insurance companies. The number of codes is increasing from 14,000 to a staggering 70,000.
As we noted previously, imagine being required to use an online drop down menu to search through 70,000 options to find just the right one. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare.
Many of the codes are absurdly detailed. For example, why should a doctor have to note that an injury was sustained in a prison swimming pool, or in a human stampede while resting or sleeping? Believe it or not, each of those circumstances, plus thousands more, has its own unique code. Dr. Julian Whitaker, in his October 2015 newsletter, found these ridiculous examples as well: “burn due to water skis on fire,” “struck by turtle,” “hurt at opera,” and “sucked into jet engine”!
It isn’t just bureaucrats who have a stake in this nonsense. So does the American Medical Association, which has a very lucrative government granted monopoly in coding services.
 

The post Natural Health News Briefs: September 29, 2015 first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

create ethical guidelines for physicians in the media, write a report on how doctors may be disciplined for violating medical ethics through their press involvement, and release a public statement denouncing the dissemination of dubious medical information through the radio, TV, newspapers, or websites.

Dr. Mehmet Oz of The Dr. Oz Show was specifically mentioned as being responsible for the type of behavior and “pseudoscience” that the AMA would like to curtail.
One of the people who helped craft the AMA resolution to tighten control of doctors in the media is not, in fact, a physician himself, but only a medical student. He told Vox in an interview that “Dr. Oz has something like 4 million viewers a day. The average physician doesn’t see a million patients in their [sic]  lifetime. That’s why organized medicine should be taking action.” In point of fact, Dr. Oz reaches only half that number—but let’s not let a little thing like accuracy stand in the way of an agenda.
Keep in mind that the AMA is not the voice of the medical profession. Its membership has slipped to the point where it represents only 17% of MDs, and many of those are free memberships given to medical students, yet it remains the fifth most powerful special interest on Capitol Hill, spending $19.7 million on lobbying in 2014. This gives it the clout to influence Medicare prices, make recommendations that shape national policy, and rake in about $218.8 million a year from its government-granted CPT medical code monopoly.
Dr. Oz is a high-profile example, but countless integrative doctors in states across the country routinely face harassment and the threat of having their licenses revoked by state medical boards for the most specious reasons—you may recall our past coverage of the Washington state board’s appalling crusade against Dr. Jonathan Wright as only one example among many. But when conventional doctors engage in behavior that is similar to that of integrative physicians—or when conventional docs flout the laws in the most egregious ways—state boards are far more lenient, if any action is taken at all.
The bias, then, is already overwhelmingly against integrative practitioners, and now the AMA is looking to take further steps to silence them. What will happen to doctors who don’t unflinchingly support the CDC vaccine regime, or who inform their patients of any alternative treatment that clashes with conventional orthodoxy? In Europe, it is already illegal for doctors to use the terms “probiotic,” “superfood,” and “antioxidant” when used in relation to commercial food products or supplements—and European doctors who even mention the benefits or health claims of any food, supplement, or non-drug product to patients face jail time. Will we allow free professional speech to be similarly suppressed here? Has the US come to this?
The only way that medical care advances and gradually becomes more scientific is by challenging orthodoxy. Doctors killed George Washington by repeatedly bleeding him. The doctor who first told physicians to wash their hands was scorned and harassed. The doctor who first found bacterial involvement in stomach ulcers was vilified until he was eventually exonerated and given prizes. As Gary Null showed so effectively in his book Death by Medicine, medical error is today the largest single cause of death in the US. How can there be advances or improvements if critics, researchers, and innovators are all gagged?
At ANH-USA, we believe in a free and open market when it comes to healthcare choices. By doing what it can to gag doctors’ free speech in the media, the AMA is indeed attempting to “defend the profession”—albeit from competition and change, not from those it dismisses as “quacks.”
Action Alert! Write to the American Medical Association and urge them not to go forward with these speech-suppressing ethical guidelines, which will unduly restrict our access to health information. We need to let them know that the American public will not stand for it. Please send your message immediately.

The post AMA Prepares Gag Order for Medical Dissenters first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

ANH-USA followed the money—and uncovered why doctors are abandoning the AMA by the thousands. Action Alert!

• The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases is a diagnostic coding system for billing and research purposes. The WHO’s new ICD-10 codes (which will be implemented by October 2014) have seventy-two ways to describe injuries sustained by birds. Imagine being required to use an online drop down menu to search through thousands of options to find just the right one. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare. No wonder some doctors report spending as much time on administration these days as they do seeing patients.
• The American Medical Association’s Current Procedural Terminology Codes (CPT),which healthcare professionals use to report medical procedures and services in patient records. Healthcare providers must use these codes—no other coding systems are permitted—in order to be reimbursed by Medicare and in practice must also use them for private insurance reimbursement.
• Physicians are required to report both the ICD and the CPT codes for billing purposes. They already use an earlier version of the ICD codes to send information to the WHO; the 2014 version has 55,000 new codes to learn, requiring extensive retraining of all medical and clerical staff who do any sort of recordkeeping.

 
Who benefits from the CPT code system? Only two groups: insurance companies, and the American Medical Association. Health insurance companies use them to determine and validate insurability and premium decisions. And though the AMA is careful not to report its revenues specifically generated from CPT codes, its 2012 Annual Report details how the organization made $218.8 million in “publishing and business services”—which includes licensing and publications on CPT coding—but only a fraction of that amount ($38.6 million) from membership dues.
 
By conservative estimates, the AMA receives twice as much income from the government as they do from its own dues-paying members. Essentially, the government—and not doctors—have become the AMA’s main customer.
 
Doctors are taking notice of this, as illustrated by the AMA’s well-documented membership woes: today only 17% of doctors belong to the AMA (down from a peak of 75% in 1950s). Membership in AMA declined for decades, spiked in 2007 (this boost doesn’t appear to be organic; some argue it was achieved by giving away 8,577 free memberships, especially to medical students and beginning doctors), and declined again in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Reported AMA physician membership is now increasing slightly—1% in 2011 and 3% in 2012—but it certainly hasn’t recovered; 2011 membership numbers of 217,000 were a far cry from their 2007 total of 241,000.
 
Why are doctors so dissatisfied with the AMA? As one leading physician and founder of SEMO (a social networking site for physicians) noted in a scathing open letter, the AMA has “long since lost its role as the voice of US physicians.” According to a 2011 survey conducted by Jackson & Coker, a physician staffing firm, 75% of doctors agreed that the AMA no longer represents them. The survey also revealed that 70% of doctors disagreed with the AMA’s position on Obamacare.
 
With conventional doctors turning away from the AMA and its monopoly on medical coding, could they find common ground with integrative practitioners in embracing alternate coding systems?
 
The AMA’s abandonment of the very constituency it claims to represent is just another example of how government agencies and private organizations designed to serve citizens are increasingly benefitting only each other—leaving patients, doctors, and consumers out in the cold. Of course integrative physicians are not just out in the cold; they are under continual attack by AMA dominated state medical boards. Not surprisingly, there are very few CPT codes for complementary or alternative medical treatments. This not only restricts insurance reimbursements, but also makes it harder to collect good data on the benefits of integrative medicine.
 
So far we have focused on the new WHO codes and the crony capitalist ridden AMA codes. But there is an alternative: ABC Coding Solutions’ ABC Codes are designed to supplement—not replace—the CPT by offering codes for a full range of integrative treatments and therapies. After continual rebuffs by the department of Health and Human Services, which liked maintaining control over the AMA by protecting the CPT monopoly (and an error-ridden review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that somehow disregarded a cost savings of over 50% by Alaska Medicaid!), ABC decided to abandon working with the government. They now work directly with practitioners to use the ABC billing codes in filing electronic claims with private insurers.
 
Action Alert! Ask the Secretary of Health and Human Services to accept the ABC coding system! Tell HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that ABC has been employed successfully in over two million claims at a cost benefit of 50 percent. Explain that the system will increase consumer access to integrative treatments for non-acute care.

The post Whom Does the American Medical Association Really Work For? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.