Author: PracticingPhysicians

Posted on

How the ABIM Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Monopoly Was Created

Recently, there have been a rash of proclamations by unaccountable non-profit physician credentialing organizations (Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), the American Boards of  Internal Medicine (ABIM) , Family Medicine and Pediatrics), and the American Medical Association to come to the public’s rescue by de-credentialing U.S. physicians they accuse of spreading misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Physicians have seen this medical monopoly-building playbook before.

The video below reviews the antitrust, monopoly-making activities of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The discrediting of certain U.S. physicians as “cheaters” and disseminators of “disinformation” serve as smokescreens to their monopoly-building activities using working physicians’ fees. As physicians worked tirelessly to care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ABIM redistributed physician testing fees for their “social justice” initiatives, most significant of which was lobbing Congress so their separate Maintenance of Certification (MOC) continuous testing product would be a never-ending source of revenue and data metrics used by the Medical Industrial Complex. Sadly, this unilaterally-imposed life-long busy-work mandate on younger, more vulnerable ABMS-board certified US physicians has harmed hundreds of physicians and tens of thousands of patients as physicians burn out and leave the profession.

For all patients who wonder why health care prices are so high and access to a board-certified physician has become so difficult at large academic institutions, look no further than the organizations above. 

Posted on

MOC’s Conflicts of Interest

How much do you know about the American Board of Medical Specialties’ Maintenance of Certification and the American Board of Internal Medicine’s recent 25% fee increase in a single year for their new MOC alternative, “Longitudinal Assessment?”

We’re trying to find out, so our elective representatives, state medical societies, and the IRS can know, too.

If you haven’t done so already, please take our anonymous survey and share it with your physicians colleagues by email or social media. (It takes just three minutes to complete).

Thank you all.

Posted on

The Kickbacks and the Cost of Insulin

Kudos to board member Marion Mass on her recent letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal 15 Apr 2022 highlighting the way Pharmacy Benefit Managers contribute to the high cost of insulin (and many other medications) for patients:

“Credit to the editorial board for alluding to the role of PBMs in America’s costly and dysfunctional prescription-drug debacle. The “rebates” collected by the PBMs are more accurately called kickbacks, as the PBMs enjoy an exemption from the antikickback statute.

Given that PBMs create formularies, which are the lists of drugs covered by third-party payers, pharmaceutical companies can pay a kickback to functionally purchase formulary placement, which amounts to market share. This obscene conflict of interest has been plainly stated at congressional hearings. Insulin and every other medication market begs for competition. We won’t have it so long as the market allows drug makers to purchase their market share through legal kickbacks.

The kickbacks account for as much as 80% of the cost of insulin, as highlighted in a 2021 Senate Finance Report. The disingenuously named Affordable Insulin Now Act doesn’t lower the cost of insulin or any other drug, because the bill does nothing to make the PBMs accountable.”

Marion Mass, M.D.

Perkasie, Pa

Posted on

A Radiologist Reviews the Siva v ABR Oral Arguments

Ben White, MD (a practicing radiologist) gives a cogent (albeit limited) review from a doctor’s perspective of the Siva v American Board of Radiology oral arguments presented 16 February 2022 to the three judges of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on his blog:

In response to the ABR’s it’s-my-party-and-I’ll-cry-if-I-want-to stance, the judge is flabbergasted:

“There’s no possible way…You can’t take the position that ‘we are the ones that certify and therefore we can define the content of the certification requirement without regard to the limitations of section 1 [of the Sherman Antitrust Act].’ That cannot possibly be your position”.

The ABR lawyer says no, but she’d just said that very thing and then literally reiterates it again in almost the same words.

This was presumably met with a long blank stare during the very pregnant pause in the audio.

So, she meant yes.

And the ABR is not entirely wrong, because MOC isn’t really a CPD product. The CPD part of MOC (OLA) is merely the veneer of credibility for the program. MOC isn’t really about CME.

It’s a tithe.

Read the whole thing.