In checking out that video, I came across another . . . about an Asheboro man who was invited to the signing of the new Healthcare bill.
Bill Groome received an e-mail invitation from the White House on Monday, the day before President Obama signed health care reform to law. Groome lost his job in 2008 and lost his health insurance. Groome enrolled in an individual family plan, and his premiums went up, so he wrote the president to share his story.
And that, chickadees, demonstrates everything that is WRONG with Obama's notions of "reform" . . . and why there are "tea-partiers" still out in the streets determined to see it repealed . . .
. . . and to show the polticos who voted "yes" the door in November.
A while back, Dr. Mary Johnson (also from Asheboro), e-mailed the White House too (even her future cyber-stalker liked the posts). But for her trouble, all she got were regular visits to Housecalls from the Department of Homeland Security and a pom-pom-queen-disguised-as-a-healthcare-czar pummeling her Inbox with pro-Obama propaganda (never fear, I'm off the White House's mailing list now).
Of course, as opposed to an invitation the White House for a bad bill signing, Dr. Mary would have preferred to have been invited to testify before Congress about her turn in Hillary's village . . . about the way the National Health Service Corps (Obama's . . . and John Edwards' before him . . . easy-yet-clueless answer to the primary care shortage) totally abandoned one of its own to the mill-town non-profiteers wanting to monopolize the local healthcare landscape to their own ends.
As I understand it, twelve years later, that plan is more or less a bust. Doctors are flocking away from the management style of Morrison and Eblin in droves. Their "team" isn't what it was cracked up to be.
Back on point, Dr. Mary knows a little bit about losing her job (in 1998 - ten years BEFORE Mr. Groome) . . . not because of Asheboro's "dying" economy, but because she stood up to the threats of two non-profiteering corporate bullies and did the right thing by a critically-ill baby . . . a baby whose life was saved.
For some reason, a doctor reporting what JCAHO would most certainly consider a "sentinel event" did not constitute "wrongful termination" in North Carolina. It still doesn't. And you know what? Obama's healthcare reform bill did not fix that. It didn't even get close.
And Dr. Mary Johnson is still pretty pissed off about that. She may have moved on, but she's not EVER gonna "get over it".
Because Dr. Mary's life was thrown to the dogs. You see, for her trouble of going above-and-beyond (and literally days after completing her public service obligation to the Feds), Dr. Mary was given five days to get out of her office (when her contract called for a six-month notice), and her pay-checks were doled out to her for the rest of that time on the condition of silence. It was, in practical effect, a "no-compete" without the "no-compete" . . . a bait and switch crafted by the crafty lawyers . . . which spat directly in the face of NHSC requirements.
But nobody but nobody was awake at the NHSC. The mighty omnipotent Federal government could not be bothered to oversee its own program . . . and hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars (spent to recruit two Pediatricians to Asheboro) went down the rabbit hole.
So tell me again, that handing more over to the government to do is going to be anything but a massive cluster-screw.
Dr. Mary's malpractice insurance was also immediately cancelled (despite the fact she was still privileged at the hospital, and still technically employed by the "non-profit" doing everything it could to keep her from re-establishing the practice that the Federal government said was hers to transition).
The insurance was reinstated. But only after an embarrassing incident (dare I call it another "sentinel event"?) that is a whole nuther story that Randolph Hospital in Asheboro, N.C. would like to keep buried.
And what with the state of rural healthcare what it is, the Obama administration would like to keep every aspect of this ugly NHSC failure all under wraps too. He only wants Pediatricians on his team that drink the deep blue Koolaid.
Because nothing in this story fits the kittens-&-puppies picture Obama wants to paint for the mostly-kept-in-the-dark-masses.
Of course there's more in this tale of doctor-woe that actually mirror Bill Groome's story. After she was thrown out on the street for doing her duty . . . and then black-balled for miles, self-employed and struggling to make ends meet/pay the damned lying lawyers, Dr. Mary did her stint with Cobra insurance too . . . and for better rates, was forced to use the facility that had put style before substance and fired her. If she didn't use Randolph, she paid more.
That skirts around a whole nuther story that the suits and their lawyers would like to keep buried: Dr. Mary getting surgically-mauled . . . not just once, but twice at Randolph Hospital.
She's pretty pissed off about that too - but she never sued for malpractice. And that's mostly because she knows what it's like to be sued (in her case, unsuccessfully - and essentially for not being psychic) - and because she hates the lawyers these days . . . really, really hates them.
OBTW, there's nothing about tort reform in Obama's new bill.
Now an independent contractor, Dr. Mary's on N.C. Blue Cross Blue Shield . . . North Carolina's biggest "non-profit" monopoly. And her premiums go up every year too (it's amazing how fast a premium can go from $200-300/month to over $800). But she never expected or asked the government to pay her bills. Just like she never asked to be bailed out of her mortgage when times were very bad for her (long before they were bad for anyone else).And if all of that wasn't enough, then we have the SLAPP suit that Randolph filed . . . in a despicable attempt to intimidate Dr. Mary into silence and/or financially destroy her (she had dared respond to a government request for feedback - and once again, the government dived under its desk when she needed help) . . . the same SLAPP suit the boys at Randolph eventually had to run from (because it's basic premise - that she was a liar - was CRAP) . . .
. . . and the same SLAPP suit that has since opened a bigger, uglier can-of-worms that the IRS, JCAHO, the NHSC, NC & US DHHS, the N.C. Medical Board and state & Federal law enforcement have determinedly ignored . . .
. . . and inside that can-of-worms would be in-your-face (as yet un-investigated, un-prosecuted) perjury, contempt and fraud on the part of non-profiteering business-types trying to get out on the cheap . . . after totally destroying a good doctor's life, reputation and practice in her own hometown with their lies and obfuscation.
But hey, the Medical Board insists that you blow that whistle on bad care. And bring on the young professionals!
Asheboro loves (to eat) them.
Meanwhile, despite all the noble rhetoric about accountability and transparency and hope and change, North Carolina AG, Roy Cooper, remains deeply asleep, and Obama's Attorney General is more concerned about whether or not terrorists get a fair trial in New York City, have three square meals a day and a quiet place to pray.
And please people, let's just forget all that nonsense about the IRS policing anything in healthcare. I mean, get real. Been there, done that. We the People cannot lie to the government. But hospitals & other "non-profits", whose life-blood rests on the public's pocketbook, can lie to us without so much as a slap on the hand.
OBTW, on the state level, let me just make the observation that Governor Dumpling is uber-late to the "let's fight fraud & abuse" party (and psst . . . with Asheboro's Keith Crisco on her arm, all the talk about ethics falls flatter than a dead possum hit by a drunk driver on a pot-holed North Carolina road).
There is a whole lot wrong with healthcare that Obama's precious "reform" bill does not begin to address. He/Pelosi/Reid/the rest did not even TRY to address those problems - it was ALL just about a quick fix to BUY votes. And that's because, like so many of the do-gooding, all-knowing Democrats who have come before #44 (in Washington and in Raleigh), Obama did not want to hear or consider the ugly stories (like Mary Johnson's) that might throw water on his "historic" fire.
Bill Groome, on the other hand, literally fits his bill.
Hope & real change is not for those of us who have paid our dues and spilt literally pools of blood in public service - on the front lines of healthcare - yet (once again) have been splattered like bugs on the headlight of Obama's "reform" train.
No. Like Clinton before him, President Barrack Hussein Obama desperately needed a legacy. He needed to prove he could get something done . . . never mind that in this particular instance, nothing would have been better than the un-Constitutional/pseudo-socialist something (filled with unintended consequences that should keep the lawyers going for years) that he and this Congress (acting like a bunch of Chicago goons) Rahmed through on a pile of back-room deals and outright bribery.
The point kind of IS that Dr. Mary Johnson should have been invited to Washington to testify before Congress LONG BEFORE Bill Groome ever set foot in the White House to see healthcare reform legislation signed.
His story is only half the story. Always has been.
There are a whole lot of Dr. Mary's out there now . . . particularly a virtual army of disgusted/demoralized primary care docs and small-business owners itching to get out from under a system-drenched-in-entitlement that does nothing but pound them further into the ground . . . and punish them for their hard work and "success" . . . while giving more and more of their labor away "for free" . . . and winking & nodding while the really phat cats keep getting rich and getting off.
Obama's real message to us is, "Know your place in my great scheme of things. And just don't make more than $250,000/year (not that most of us in primary care can) . . . lest your "wealth" be redistributed" to the masses we don't have enough of you to take care of.
And I say to these people now flinging the tea . . . people who are done with sitting down and shutting up . . . welcome to my world and my party!
But really, where the hell have you-all been until now?
