The 5th Horseman: Cryptoanarchist doctors.

["Peter Trei" <trei@process.com>]

I don't often get Forbes, but the Oct 6 issue
caught my eye. Leafing through it, I found something
fun in the letters column.

It's in response to a 'fact & comment' column in the Sept 22
issue, the core of which is:

----------------
 Here's how this basic attack on our personal
 freedom will work: A doctor who provides
 medical services to a Medicare-eligible patient
 without billing Medicare must sign an affidavit to
 the Secretary of Health and Human Services that
 he or she will not treat a single Medicare patient
 for the next two years. Any doctor found treating
 both Medicare patients and Medicare-eligible
 private patients will be subject to fines and
 perhaps prison. As Moffit points out, Section
 4507 is "deliberately designed to make private
 contracting and medicine all but
 impossible except for physicians who reside in
 very wealthy communities." 

 Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) correctly observes
 that this prohibition is the equivalent of Social
 Security's barring retirees from dealing with
 stockbrokers: "Surely, a law that made it illegal
 to supplement with private funds the amount
 received from Social Security would be met with
 disbelief and derision." Yet that is the equivalent
 of what this Medicare regulation does. 
------------------

The letter reads:

SIR: I have been treating Medicare patients for cash
without filing Medicare claims for years. I do not 
intend to stop. If the government receives no forms, 
how will it know that a beneficiary received care from
me? And the feds can't seize my records. They are all
computerized and encrypted.


Anthony A. Cassens, M.D
Los Angeles, Calif.

---------------------

Peter Trei
trei@process.com