Educate Your Patients and Employees
((From our good friends at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) – print these letters off on your letterhead, sign your name, and pass them out in your waiting room – they’re free and available for your use. Kudos to Dr. Jane Orient, Dr. Alieta Eck and the hardworking and noisy docs at AAPS for anticipating the need and meeting it!))
Dear AAPS Members & Friends:
I was stunned to learn, from a casual conversation with an acquaintance, that he really thinks this election is about Big Bird--or in his case, subsidies for the symphony!
Your patients respect your opinion. Here is a short version and a long version of a letter you could place in your reception room. Please borrow and use as you like!
Sincerely,
Jane M. Orient, M.D.
AAPS Executive Director
SHORT VERSION -
YOUR LETTERHEAD
My Valued Employees and Patients:
I hope that when the New Year comes, I will still be here to sign your paycheck or to serve you when you are ill.
But a lot depends on the outcome of the election.
While I cannot tell you how to vote, I strongly urge you to consider all the issues carefully and to exercise your right to vote. And be sure that you, your family, friends, fellow parishioners, and other like-minded people are registered to vote and do so.
As I see it, the one over-riding issue is the need to repeal ObamaCare. There are a couple of pages, constantly talked about, that many people like. And more than 900 pages that they wouldn’t like, if they knew about them. Most of these won’t be in effect until 2014—too late to influence the election.
Obama has repeatedly promised that if you like your insurance plan or your doctor, you can keep them. But only, of course, if they are still there. ObamaCare is driving up insurance premiums and even outlawing the most economical policies. ObamaCare is forcing independent doctors out of practice altogether, or into employment by big organizations, to whom you are a cost, a liability, even an annoyance.
The other thing that might not be there is your job. ObamaCare costs are causing many employers to cut the number of workers and avoid hiring new ones.
Find out how your candidate would vote on repealing ObamaCare. And remember: if he or she is a Democrat running for Senate it might not matter. The Senate is under one-party, virtually one-man rule. If Harry Reid won’t bring an issue to a vote, your Senator can’t vote on it.
The House of Representatives has voted some 30 times to repeal ObamaCare. This will not even come to a vote in the Senate and will surely be vetoed by the President if there is not a change in the majority party in the Senate or the occupant of the White House. That’s why party affiliation is of unprecedented importance this year.
If you have questions, ask me. I would be delighted to discuss the issues with you, and provide more information.
Sincerely,
Your Doctor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LONG VERSION -
YOUR LETTERHEAD
My Valued Employees and Patients:
I am very worried about the future of our country. We are facing a “fiscal cliff” in January, in which things in our already stressed economy could rapidly get much worse. Much depends on the outcome of the election. While I cannot tell you how to vote, I strongly urge you to consider all the issues carefully and to exercise your right to vote.
I would like to present some facts that you may want to take into consideration. We are all in this together, although the current administration and the press have created an environment that pits employers against employees, doctors against patients, the “rich 1%” against everyone else—as the government “spreads the wealth around.”
A huge part of the problem concerns the one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy called “healthcare.” People are very worried about the future of their medical care.
ObamaCare promises to solve the problems in our medical system. It promises to lower costs, to cover everyone or nearly everyone, to improve quality, and to allow you to keep your insurance plan or your doctor if you like them. You have probably heard about pre-existings and 26-year-old children many times. Those two popular pages come with nearly 1,000 other pages that people dislike when they learn about them.
The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated cost has already more than doubled. The “savings” from taking money out of Medicare payments are now $716 billion.
The costs of insurance premiums have gone up about $3,000, and many employers may drop their workers’ insurance plans. The premiums may be much greater than penalties for dropping coverage. One way to decrease penalties is to lay off workers. Many workers will wind up on Medicaid.
Many believe that physicians are among “the 1%.” Some even say that American medicine is more expensive than European medicine because doctors make too much money. I won’t ask you to feel sorry for physicians, but you might like to know that the costs of running a practice siphon off 60% or even more of all revenue. With ObamaCare, bureaucratic compliance costs will go up, and revenue will go down.
Many physicians love their practices and their patients so much that they have been subsidizing their payroll and office expenses from their savings, but this cannot continue indefinitely. Physicians are selling their practices to hospitals or other large entities or even retiring altogether. What this means to you as a patient is that you may not be able to keep your doctor because he simply won’t be there.
Alternately, your doctor might be there but he might not be working for you. He will rather be dependent on a payout from an accountable care organization, which is focused on decreasing total expenditures and eliminating “disparities.” That means redistributing care from the patients who need it most to those who best serve to meet the plan’s “quality” and cost objectives.
It is believed by the Administration that at least a third of the care that is rendered to Medicare patients is unnecessary. This may mean that your hip replacement, your cataract surgery, or treatment of your heart disease or pneumonia is among the unnecessary costs—or perhaps “futile” costs because you are after all frail and elderly and have many chronic conditions and cannot be restored to a robust state of health.
The House of Representatives has voted some 30 times to repeal ObamaCare. This will not even come to a vote in the Senate and will surely be vetoed by the President if there is not a change in the majority party in the Senate or the occupant of the White House.
You may recall from reading George Orwell’s classic book Animal Farm that as problems on the farm grew more and more severe, the good old workhorse named Boxer decided that he would just work a little bit harder. Ultimately, however, he could no longer carry the load and was sent to the glue factory.
Our country is in dire financial straits. “Asking the rich to pay a little more” is not going to solve the problem. We must unleash the forces of free enterprise in the economy so that the economy can grow, generating wealth and productive enterprise.
I think the choices in this election are pretty stark: Between those who plan to increase the load on the productive area of the economy and extract more and more to be redistributed to less productive sectors or individuals—or those who believe that we need to unleash the forces of freedom. We need to have all of our nation’s talented and productive people working as hard as they can and investing their capital, rather than deciding to quit while they are still a little bit ahead.
ObamaCare is an experiment—of a type that has always failed—and we are the guinea pigs. But once the current system is destroyed, there is no going back.
Will your candidate vote to repeal ObamaCare? Or does he want to redistribute your wealth and your care? Please think about these issues. Talk to your friends, family, and associates. Do not be distracted by talking points or by promised benefits that politicians simply cannot deliver when we’re already $16 trillion in debt. The future of our country, including the lives of your children and grandchildren, depend on you.
I hope that when the New Year comes, I will still be here to sign your paycheck or to serve you when you are ill.
If you have questions, ask me. I would be delighted to discuss the issues with you.
Sincerely,
Your Doctor
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