Dr. Kristin Story Held
The Government Takeover of Medicine
When Medicare and Medicaid were created, the government promised not to interfere in the practice of medicine in any way. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Act into law on July 30, 1965, ironically in Independence, MO.
It read: Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided, or over the selection, tenure, or compensation of any officer, or employee, or any institution, agency or person providing health care services… or to exercise any supervision or control over the administration or operation of any such [health-care] institution, agency, or person. Section 1801, Medicare Act, 1965
Fifty years later, in flagrant violation of this prohibition clause, stands the 2015 Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), replete with the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS is a rubric the federal government uses to grade physicians and assign each a score of 0 to 100. The Composite Performance Score (CPS) is used to financially incentivize or penalize physicians, and then the scores are posted on a public website for all to see.
The core of MIPS is the ultimate conflict of interest: the very lives and well-being of America’s patients vs. the money and power of the medico-industrial complex run by a small group of insider elites, implemented and micro managed by entrenched, faceless deep state bureaucrats. Physicians must choose sides.
Will your physician follow the tradition of Hippocrates, who believed the physician works on behalf of the patient, not for the good of the state—risking his livelihood? Or will he follow the Greek philosopher Plato, who urged that doctors refrain from curing the weak and infirm to improve society? MIPS incentives mean punishment and abuse for serving patients first, and rewards for serving society.
MIPS grades physicians on quality (outcomes), advancing care information, improvement activities, and cost. Earning a high score often requires doing what government says instead of what is best for the patient.
Kristin Story Held, M.D. is a board certified ophthalmologist and ophthalmic surgeon. She is a Phi Beta Kappa Graduate from the University of Texas at Austin and received her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio where she was elected to AOA. Following her internship in internal medicine and residency in ophthalmology, Dr. Held joined the faculty at the Univ. of TX Health Science Center at San Antonio where she taught residents and medical students and served as Director of the County Ophthalmology Clinic. She maintains an academic affiliation as a Clinical Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology. For the past 20 years she has been in private practice in San Antonio.
Dr. Kristin Held M.D. and the amazing details on what the USG has in mind for Health Care, December 14
'Dr. Kristin Story Held – The Government Takeover of Medicine – December 14, 2017' have 5 comments
December 20, 2017 @ 9:13 am Doug Moore
I have a child diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenic disorder. Any suggestions?
December 23, 2017 @ 12:11 pm jay
ya, keep her as far a way from the psychiatrist and there dangerous fluoride based pharmaceuticals and treat her with nutrition and watch as her condition improves~
December 22, 2017 @ 10:36 pm RMS
I’ve never heard this broken down this way before, this situation is so complex.
Did she give a website you can link to which has this all explained further?
December 29, 2017 @ 11:29 am MLnVA
I can see Dr. Held has studied the law and the numbers thoroughly. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to see the forest for the trees. Her opinion is that if the government would just get out of the way, doctors could return to truly serving patients. Uh, sorry, but she is failing to notice that the Western (mechanized) paradigm has failed us. Doctors (and other conventional providers) are not victims – they are part of the problem in so far as they have failed to ask the hard questions then act on the truth.
Better to hear the message from a doctor like Jennifer Daniels who is able to pull back the curtain and see the real dirt inside the medical/industrial complex and refuse to play the game. I really respect that. Dr. Daniels isn’t advocating we rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic – she is telling us not to take that ship!
January 8, 2018 @ 7:27 pm cab
Knowing how little Big Medicine actually does to help anybody’s health — this may be a blessing in disguise. People may start eating right and just go online and Google in their symptoms and find out what supplements and food to eat. Or just cough up $25 or $35 and go to a chiropractor and get treated holistically. DOn’t have to worry about your private info getting put into a government databank or going to a physician who is part of the system, and Dr. Daniels has warned us that all these doctors are, in effect, agents of the government. They can force an older person to take deathly ‘treatments’ and force parents to hand over their children for deathly treatments too. The best thing is for everyone to avoid the whole system, just like Dr. Daniels has warned us. We all know that people who go to doctors end up dead fast, and hospitals are indeed the most dangerous place to be, as Dr. Daniels has warned. Let the System put itself out of business, while people begin to help themselves by eating right and doing things for themselves. It only takes a second to Google up remedies for anything. The drugstores sell splints. Of course if you get in a bad car accident trauma care is the best in the world so we’re told, but most things are people getting overdiagosed and misdiagnosed with invasive and dangerous treatments and procedures. Diabetes is treated totally wrong and it is the diabetes drugs that end up killing people, not their blood sugar issue. It’s all a big scam. Dr. Daniels is right on the money. I would like to be out of the country like she is, even tho I think she’s having a hard time just getting the technology she needs to broadcast. This program was very excellent to drive home the point of what a total scam Big Medicine is, and why people who want to be healers should study naturopathy or chiropractic which forbids them to prescribe pharma meds. The pharma meds don’t help, and the medics aren’t allowed to do anything but prescribe expensive dangerous meds and procedures. I don’t know why anybody would want to study to be a medical doctor. Period. This doctor is a surgeon, and that’s in another category, but even most surgeries are not necessary or good. My attitude toward Big Medicine is — stay away. Just avoid those people altogether. Even dentists are hurting people, giving root canals that end up killing people, even tho we’ve known for 100 years that root canals are deadly. Whatever.