Kris Held,MD. @kksheld. ConservativeChristianPhysician/Patient/Survivor/Wife/Mother of 4 daughters/smallbizowner/on a mission to get govt out of medicine/
Posted on 02/02/2014 2:48:14 AM PST by saywhatagain
Dear Mr. Bertolini,
With a deep sense of sadness, I must inform you that I will no longer serve as a physician for Aetna patients under the terms of our contractual agreement, which you most recently unilaterally changed.
I have been privileged and honored to care for thousands of patients covered by Aetna policies since the 1990’s. I have devoted my life to providing the very best, state-of-the-art care to these individuals. We have formed a patient-doctor relationship, which I hope many will chose to continue in spite of my severing ties with Aetna. You see, health insurance has evolved such that insurers and government have inserted themselves smack-dab in the middle of the once sacred patient-doctor relationship. I am called a provider- not a doctor.
My patient is now yours- not mine. What I can do as a physician now has strangulating strings and nonsensical numbers attached- to you and government and money-not the best interests of the patients.
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.
Millions of Americans 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. Only by logging in as a prospective patient 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.
Then, after the fact, I received a form letter informing me of Aetna’s “new allowables”. I will not sell my services under such terms. 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.
So here we are, you are getting new business offering health insurance plans featuring my services without my consent under terms which are unacceptable to me. Accept this as my official written notice that the changes that you have unilaterally made to our contract are unacceptable to me and make our contract null and void.
You must explain this to your patients. You must tell them that they have purchased a product that was misrepresented to them and that you cannot deliver. 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.
Kris Held MD
I pray only more like her will stand up and take action
Aetna pretty much sux anyway...good letter!
I sent this nice lady a short note of support..
I hope many others do the same...I’m sure she would appreciate the kind thoughts and prayers.
Bravo Dr.Held. I can only imagine how you would have felt if you would have had a chance to become a fully functional, dues paying, high profile member of the SEIU. We haven’t seen anything yet.
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort. Wish more if not all Freepers do the same. She is so very deserving of our support for standing up and speaking out as she does.
Why do we have a Second Amendment?
I started to, but I don’t want mine published.
I sent the link to Drudge, FWIW.
Wonderful find and posting, saywhatagain!!
Kris Held,MD. @kksheld. ConservativeChristianPhysician/Patient/Survivor/Wife/Mother of 4 daughters/smallbizowner/on a mission to get govt out of medicine/
You had to go there! LOL !
Obviously too beautiful to be a liberal feminist in the USA.
> Then, after the fact, I received a form letter informing me of Aetna’s “new allowables”. I will not sell my services under such terms. 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.
I wish all doctors would rise up and say that to King Obama but I’m sure they don’t want the IRS audits, the NSA evesdropping or the possibility that their vehicle might go careening of a bridge unexpectedly.
Beauty and brains in one package and a conservative to boot! There’s a lucky man out there somewhere...
(((((MM))))))
I think he loves you back!
You have a wonderful, caring doctor.
He is God sent.
You have my prayers, sweetheart.
This is how you counter that democrat “war on women” BS: you point out and demand answers for every doctor like Kris, every politician like Mia and Sarah and Condolezza.
sick and tired of the democraps getting mileage off of that completely fabricated matra when republicans do nothing to counter.
RLTW
The Democrat Party of 2008 onward has morphed into the National Socialists Worker's Party of 1930s Germany. Very few have noticed and even fewer care.
This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Here are several of the factors that are driving MD’s from their profession.
1. Government control over HOW they can treat their patient.
2. Government control over HOW MUCH they will be paid.
3. Higher taxes on the amount they earn from their work.
4. No protection from malpractice claims.
5. Most medical specialties have Board Certifications which have comprehensive exams that must be passed every ten years for re-certification. The physicians who were grandfathered and exempt from the exams (pre 1980+-) are now retiring. Those who finished residency in the 1980’s are now 35 years out and are now saying that this is the last time they will take the exams.
6. Many physicians have made enough $$ and their children are now out of the nest and beyond college thus they no longer are forced to work.
7. Dangers to themselves of new viruses and infections that are untreatable.
There will be a mass exodus in the next few years.. (months)
Add to the list:
8. Being forced to provide medical treatments that are inconsistent with their personal beliefs.
Actually Amendment 13 should apply to physicians with respect to Obamacare:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It seems like many of the Obamacare regulations pertaining to physician compensation or how they can prescribe drugs or treatment construe “involuntary servitude”.
My own doctor “fired” his insurance companies and went to a cash business. I was lucky in that I was already a patient since he’s had to turn a lot of people away due to sheer volume.
and the reason the insurance companies were so compliant or frankly coconspirators in all this: “they have purchased a product that was misrepresented to them and that you cannot deliver....decreased access to care from actual physicians and the shockingly increased costs Aetna patients will now experience”
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