Can health care become affordable again? Yes. Can you escape Obamacare’s high prices and restrictive controls? Yes. Can Americans have their medical privacy rights restored? Again, yes.
You may think this sounds impossible. For most of your life and mine, there has been a steady government takeover of the health care system, starting with Medicare and progressing to Obamacare. You may also doubt that Hillary Clinton, who worked to give us a national health care system under her husband, or Donald Trump, who has expressed support for the Canadian single-payer system, would repeal Obamacare.
But what if we could bypass these government systems and advance freedom regardless of what a President or Congress does?
Welcome to “The Wedge of Health Freedom,” where care is patient-friendly, price-friendly and privacy-friendly.
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) launched “The Wedge” for two reasons. First, we know there are doctors and practices operating today who serve their patients freely because their hands are not tied by contracts with Big Insurance or Big Government. But the problem is that many Americans don’t know these practices exist—sometimes right in their own backyards. Therefore, CCHF wants to identify and make visible the free-trade zone existing today.
Second, we wanted to establish a nationwide grassroots movement that would draw the public’s attention to this zone (“The Wedge”), offer these practices as an attractive choice for patients everywhere, encourage doctors to escape into The Wedge, defend the right of “Wedge practices” to operate freely without government interference, and expand The Wedge into an ever-larger slice of the American health care pie.
The Wedge of Health Freedom has eight simple but important principles for Wedge practices:
- Transparent, affordable pricing
- Freedom to choose
- True patient privacy
- No government reporting
- No outside interference
- Cash-based pricing
- Protected patient-doctor relationship
- All patients welcome
In short, The Wedge is going “back to the future” of health care. Because Wedge practices do not sign managed care contracts or participate in Medicare—but they still see Medicare and managed care patients—they are exempt from 132,000 pages of Medicare regulations, more than 20,000 pages of Obamacare regulations, 962 pages of new proposed Medicare payment regulations, the expensive electronic health record (EHR) mandate, and all the attorneys, billers, coders, data reporters and administrative managers associated with these and other regulatory burdens. These cash-based practices are free of third-party payer controls and costs, and the savings are passed on to the patient.
I’m pleased to say that doctors are joining The Wedge every day, making their Wedge practices visible, available and easy to find. Using the Wedge website, patients will soon be able to locate doctors who will work for them, and only them.
Working in confidential, affordable, ethical and trusted relationships without interference from government and corporate outsiders is exactly how health care is supposed to be. It’s how it was before the “invasion of Medicare,” as Dr. Brenda Arnett, M.D., who runs a Wedge practice in Virginia, said at our launch this summer in Washington, D.C.
As Dr. Arnett discovered, the problem with health care today is how it’s paid for. Patients receive care, but are not directly responsible for the bill, insulating them from costs, adding expensive, unnecessary bureaucratic processes to the cost of care, and allowing insurers to delay and deny patient access to care. The Wedge puts patients and doctors in a direct contractual relationship that’s trusted, confidential and affordable.
All patients need a doctor in their corner—a doctor dedicated to protecting and caring for them when they cannot protect and care for themselves. The Wedge is for everyone, including the insured, the uninsured and the subsidized. When a health plan says no, even the “covered” may need a doctor who says yes.
Here are a few comments we’ve heard since our launch:
- “I love it. My boss will love it.” (congressional staffer, D.C.)
- “What you’re doing will help everyone in the country.” (physician, PA)
- “Is this available in the state of Texas?” (citizen, TX)
Wedge practices can include doctor’s offices run by physicians, dentists, and others. And in the future, we envision deregulated, affordable “Wedge hospitals.”
The Wedge is a grassroots campaign. The more patients help us introduce The Wedge to their doctors, the faster it will grow. Our Wedge website features resources for patients, including fliers and a one-page Wedge overview.
Your doctor wants to escape. There isn’t a practicing doctor in America who loves the unethical bureaucratic mess that the practice of medicine has become. To escape, many doctors are retiring before they want to—at a time when Americans face a looming shortage of doctors. Help your doctor escape into The Wedge. Together, we will restore health freedom to America’s patients and doctors.
(Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom is a patient-centered national health freedom organization based in St. Paul, Minn., that exists to protect health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy rights. CCHF sponsors the daily, 60-second radio feature, “Health Freedom Minute,” which airs on nearly 800 stations nationwide. CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase, R.N., has been called one of the “100 Most Powerful People in Health Care” and one of “Minnesota’s 100 Most Influential Health Care Leaders.”)