BACKGROUND:

Edward Harshman, a Maine physician, was served with a formal licensure complaint CR10-206 in May 2010, for sending a DVD to the Maine State Prison with suggestions for how various prisoners could be better treated. The complaint was dismissed with a letter of guidance in late 2011, but only after substantial inconvenience and expense.

With the complaint, the medical board sent to Edward Harshman a copy of a page from his website in which he advises people with surgical needs to leave the state because surgery will often be less expensive elsewhere. This page has nothing to do with the content of the complaint. The chief complainer and now the board secretary is an ophthalmologist. Eye procedures, such as laser retinal attachment, blood-vessel repair, and corneal refraction adjustments, are quickly done and pay handsomely. It is possible that the board secretary was trying to intimidate Edward Harshman into not cutting into her income by sending business to lower-cost competitors.

You can see the offensive page here. It was removed from Dr. Harshman's website, but has since been restored.

In early 2012, a lawsuit was planned and probably commmenced against the Federation of State Medical Boards and the American Board of Medical Specialties on federal antitrust grounds. The State of Maine may be vulnerable to an eventual federal injunction if it does nothing while the lawsuit runs its course, later having to scramble to cooperate with the federal ruling.

Meanwhile, lawsuit or no, the health care licensure laws can be altered to not only reduce or eliminate liability to an eventual federal injunction, but also improve health care in Maine and our general prosperity too. We will have to do something. Let's do the right thing, sooner rather than later. Here's how:

WHERE TO FIND THE PROPOSED CHANGES

The PDF file is here.

WHAT THESE CHANGES WILL DO:

Reduce health-care costs for everyone, not by contriving to make someone other than the patient pay more, but by reducing true cost so there is less money required that patients and insurers together must pay

Tell the nation at large that Maine has a government that has a constructive attitude about health care therefore business in general so that hard-working and productive people will want to move in

Attract the nonconforming physicians who are weary of hospital bureaucracies, increasing our primary-care physician base

Improve the morale of Maine physicians and other health-care providers

Facilitate the creation of convalescent homes for EDTA chelation, so as to improve health of many a self-pay elderly person and provide considerable business to the hotel and hospitality industry, thereby giving Maine a desperately needed source of income and of jobs in the private sector

Deter frivolous medical complaints so that generally disruptive people (often people who receive government benefits and whose existence helps keep our taxes high) will choose to move out rather than have their medical records tarnished

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Read the PDF file. Send it to your friends.

Tell your state representative about your views.
Identify your state representative here.

Tell your state senator about your views.
Identify your state senator here or here.

Tell Governor LePage about your views.
Ask his office to tell you not only his own opinion,
but also the opinion of the Director of Boards and Commissions.
You can leave a message for the Governor here.

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