The Medical Establishment Fired Me for Rejecting Conventional Wisdom

Recently by Karen De Coster: Do Black Friday Shoppers Care About Starving Children?

The greatest things always seem to happen to me. By "greatest," I mean the kind of really offbeat stuff that just doesn't seem to happen to a lot of other people. Stuff that makes for such good stories that it almost sounds fabricated.

Two weeks ago, I received a certified letter with the familiar logo of my Doctor's office on the envelope. I opened it to find out that I was being fired. I was kindly informed that I should never again return to the office as a patient. Here is the letter I received, with the printed name scratched out to protect the guilty.

I was never a patient of Dr. "Owner" (as I'll call him), but I was a patient of another doc in the office, Dr. A, who used to own the medical practice in the good old days, before Dr. Owner took over and turned the practice into something resembling a Department of Motor Vehicles office. First, I'll backpedal a bit to provide a little history to this story.

About fifteen or so years ago, when I was already suspicious of the federal food pyramid, the quasi-government nutrition-diet establishment, and the medical oligarchy, I used to listen to Dr. A appear as an occasional guest on the AM morning talk show (on WXYZ in Detroit) I tuned in to each day. Dr. A was a D.O., he had a holistic bent, and he always talked about alternative views for medical care. One of his favorite subjects to talk about was home remedies and why they were often more successful at treating ailments than the drugstore and pharmaceutical alternatives. When I heard him talk up Hot Toddies, which are a time-honored tradition in my family, I was sold. Dr. A became our new family doctor.

Over time, his medical practice changed. Business rules became more stringent, and patient care seemed to get pushed into the background and became secondary to the enforcement of rules and regulations. I don't blame it all on the doctors – the entire American medical establishment has become statist and Sovietized under our quasi-governmental, third-party payment system that has completely abandoned functional medicine while taking the oath of Big Pharma and Big Cancer.

A few years ago, Dr. Owner bought the business from Dr. A. He is a fairly young guy, and a strict adherent of conventional wisdom – exactly the kind of Doc being turned out by the medical establishment nowadays. Each time I visited the office I was asked to get a flu shot and make an appointment for a mammogram – two standard items that define the establishment protocol. Neither of these is beneficial, and in fact both are harmful, but lots of folks in the statist medical system make a whole lot of money off of the existence of this protocol. One month ago, I had to visit the doc, and when I was asked again if I wanted a flu shot, I said, "When I want to avoid the teensy-weensy chance that I will get a mild flu for 3 days, and increase my chance of long-term health problems or immediate harm to my immune system, I'll get your flu shot." I was branded as a "troublemaker" because I kept denying the flu shot.

This office visit also came with another suggestion to get a mammogram. This was my ninth time saying, "Only if I want to increase my chances of getting cancer." As the troublemaker, I was then asked to sign a waiver saying that I was indeed refusing to get this "life-saving" test. I signed; I have no issues with confirming my dissent in writing.

In addition to all of the conventional wisdom that I kindly said "no" to, I always had to ask for a referral to my chiropractor in order to have those visits covered. You see, I have had an HMO (managed health care plan) because, not only did I not pay anything for my full coverage, I got paid by my employer to be in this special "Healthy Wellness" program because my health stats were so sterling. My net cost savings was $88 per month. I thought I could tolerate the HMO because I hardly ever used health care or went to the doc, and plus, I am a cash-based patient at the local Center for Holistic Medicine. That's why I opted for the HMO; it was useful in case I needed coverage for an unexpected or catastrophic event. Then I suffered a blunt force injury that did some damage to my pelvis and sacroiliac joint. So I had to go to my doc, as my primary care physician, to get referrals for specialty care. That's when stuff got ugly. Predictably, my chiropractic referral wasn't granted – why should I want to see a chiropractor when my conventional doc can give me scripts and flu shots and send me for annual mammograms?

Essentially, following that last appointment, I had already fired my doc because I had switched to a PPO health plan, via my employer, dumping the managed health care plan and moving to the PPO effective January 1, 2012. I had already decided I wasn't ever going back to that place again. Then I got that letter telling me I was no longer welcome. So I decided to send back a certified letter of my own. I shortened the last names for privacy. Dr. MK is the same as Dr. Owner.

12/29/2011

Dear Dr. MK,

Thank you for your recent notification that I have been fired as a patient at The Family Doctor.

However, after concluding my most recent appointment at your office (Dec 2011), I thought I had already fired you. Effective January 1st, 2012, I move back to a PPO, and accordingly, I will no longer be required to have my health care needs managed at the most basic level by a Primary Care Physician. I will not need any "medical care" from you or your office from now until January 15th, a period determined by you.

Your offer is very gracious, but should I ever need medical advice or attention, I have already become a cash-based patient at the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, where I have already passed the Independence & Wellness Test with flying colors.

Dr. MK, I do understand, as per your letter, that the "circumstances" you describe definitely do necessitate a parting of ways for my benefit (and sanity), as well as for the good of your practice/business. My refusal to give way to incessant requests to receive your government-medical-pharmaceutical establishment flu shot, as well as my refusal to comply with your office's requests for an excessive dose of unnecessary radiation via pointless mammograms, do not put me in your favor from the standpoint of your adherence to medical conventional wisdom.

Yes, I understand that the above listed items are profitable schemes for many of the participants in the health care industry. Yet I have chosen to not sacrifice my health for the sake of complying with the demands of a wayward health & wellness paradigm that just makes people sicker.

Accordingly, the office wallpaper (wastebaskets, pens, gowns, mats, equipment, etc., etc. stamped with a Big Pharma logo) would also confirm your astute observation that "the continuation of our Physician/Patient relationship will no longer be beneficial to me." I agree with you wholeheartedly. Indeed, the conventional wisdom passed off as "medical care" offers me no benefit as a healthy, happy human being who is in charge of her own life.

But I do thank Dr. A for past years of service, prior to the business changeover. And I also give kudos to Ms. B, a wonderful PA (Physician Assistant). Please give her my best.

Shortly, I will be requesting the release of my medical records to Dr. Brownstein's office.

Sincerely,

Karen DeCoster, CPA

Owner of a Healthy, Thriving Body

I enjoyed writing and sending the letter. I'd like to say that no more HMO means no more managed care for me, but that certainly is not true. The entire system – whether you have traditional coverage, a PPO, or any version of an HMO – has become a centrally planned, quasi-nationalized health care scheme where the patient's independence, choices, and ultimately, health, are sacrificed to the standard protocol as determined by the medical establishment's purveyors of conventional wisdom.

Americans are already held captive by the fraudulent system's purposeful constraints, but just wait until the nationalized system becomes "official" and those who have opted out in the past – cash-based patients and folks who spurn health coverage – become targets for punishment for denying the regime's mandatory ball and chain.

January 6, 2012