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The 5th Horseman: Cryptoanarchist doctors.
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:
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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.
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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.
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Peter Trei
[email protected]