Marion Mass, M.D. PPA co-founder
Patients… it’s always been about you!!! The physicians that are putting themselves in the line of #covid19 🦠fire, are here for you and working alongside bedside nurses, respiratory therapists and every hospital personnel in scrubs. High time we were all a #stewardofmedicine! 👩🏾⚕️👨⚕️🧬
Were you there when the battle cry, #givemePPE (more accurately, #giveUSPPE came out? It was a rally point!!
For decades, perverse incentives that allow the BIG corporate quasi-monopolies to prosper, have been making sure that you, America, PAY more💰💵 and get less in health care.
It’s time to realign incentives that promote inclusive stake-holding. This would mean more patients able to capture medical care at a lower dollar value, paying less for health care. It would mean more practicing physicians able to treat you, the patients as we were trained, making enough to pay back the dozen years+ of education needed to become a physician. More bedside Nurses and more Respiratory Therapists and Physical Therapists and others able to support their families.
This means fewer paper pushing middlemen who are offering little value. Put simply, they are represented by monopolized BIG companies (Pharmacy Benefit Managers, Group Purchasing Organizations, hospital systems, insurance companies, Health Care IT, and pharma,) are robbing America blind, and many are RESPONSIBLE for all of the delays in test kits in getting Protective gear #PPE, BIG companies have been medication hoarding, and offshoring supplies and drugs to China and other countries.
Three years ago when we opened up Practicing Physicians of America (PPA) at the Library of Congress, who knew that our band: Westby G. Fisher, Niran Al-Agba, Brian Jamal Dixon, Judith Thompson and Myself would be on the front lines of COVID19? https://practicingphysician.org/
Who knew that after writing the Free2Care White Paper Last year, the changes we (Myself, David Balat, Kimberly Legg Corba, Doc Nikki Johnson, Caren Gallaher, Twila Brase, Kris Held, Craig M. Wax, Robert Campbell and others suggested to multiple Senators, Congresspeople and other policy makers, would present themselves as being necessary to happen so now and for the next epidemic, medical care workers aren’t fighting a virus without gear and tests, and we, the #scrubs are leading and NOT the suits in the C suites.
PPA became a member group of the Free 2 Care Coalition http://free2care.org/ Free2Care is now 2 dozen groups, with now 3 million patients and 37,000 Physicians, about to expand to 60,000. We are aligned behind the ideas in our white paper, in the process of updating. The ideas that unite Free2 Care are patient centric, Physician/Patient relationship friendly, cost effective and non partisan. Paper can be accessed here: http://free2care.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Free2care.pdf
Free2Care has invited collaboration for a year. Member groups include: Physicians4Patients (Caren Gallaher, Basia Jenkins, Doc Nikki Johnson) Physician Outlook (Marlene Smith ) Hope4Docs (Marnie McGrath) Physicians Working Together ( Doc K Jackson Christina Lang, Marie Jhin Lassila ) DPC Action (Kimberly Legg Corba, Katarina Lindley, Lee S. Gross, Josh Umbehr, Chad Savage) Association of Independent Doctors (Marni Jameson Carey) Patient Rights Advocate ( led by the late Great physician and Senator Dr Tom Coburn, who passed away today. May he, a tireless advocate and always a physician rest in Peace) AMAC (The late Dan Weber and his family, Andy Mangione Bob Carlestrom ) Patients Rising Now (Terry Merrill Wilcox) Citizens Health (John Chamberlain, Megan Janas, Brennen Hodge) The Job Creator’s Network, Physicians for Reform (C.L. Gray, Bev Gossage) Practicing Physicians of America, who is proud to be helped by Kenneth A. Fisher , Lia Huston, Mark Lopatin, Christina Dewey, Katherine Newland Barton, Roy Stoller, Susan M Hull, Mark Lopatin, Susan Brown, Holly Thacker, Rupali Chadha, Jessica Leigh, Mary Delila Tipton, Jamie Wells, Dana Corriel, Amaryllis Sanchez, Jayemzee Costello, Patricia Aronin Sherrill, Natalie Newman, Reese Tassey, Ed Gaines, Chris Sheeron, Phil Mandato, Christine L. Saba-Constantios, Phil Totonelly, Karladine Evelyn Graves, Meg Edison, Sheila A. Olive, Pastor Stephen Broden, Robert Arlett, K Kay Moody, John Radell, Amy Judice Townsend, Amy Zellers-Shrader, Joel Strom, Justice in Medicine, Joan Cullen, Sheila Page, Danae Powers, Michael DellaVecchia, Brian Sachs, Ayal Kaynan, Scott Hardeman, Robert Dean, Marcello Hochman, Marchelle, Gianni, Venu Julapalli, Holly Fritch, John Tomicki, and so so many more!!)
Free2Care Executive Director, David Balat does this PRO BONO, as do all of the PPA board, and almost all of the physicians in the Groups who participate including those mentioned above and more!!!
Invite your physician friends to join one of the Free2Care member groups, PPA is free. Patients can join Patients Rising or AMAC. Physicians can join PPA here: https://practicingphysician.org/join/
Together we have multiple connections to Senators, Congresspeople, HHS, CMS and the Administration, and among our member groups, we have been SHARING those connections. Just today, the Amazing Amy Mecozzi Cho, Daniel Choi, Jason Adler, and Julio Gonzalez were emailing a US Senator who immediately called CMS to 🔨 barriers to make sure patients get care and nurses and doctors were protected.
This is after a week of more physician heroes pulling bad Surprise Billing language out of the COVID bill (twice) and pulling language that restricts cost saving innovation models out of the COVID bill. Nothing like tweeting “Take the PORK out, Piggies” 🐷directly at multiple Senators. Take that!!!
Good citizen centric ideas belong to all of us. And congress, the president and EVERY elected official works FOR #WeThePeople!
no time to rest… #patientsfirst #takebackmedicine trust #scrubsNOTsuits first!
⌛️⏰Time is up!!
Happy National Physicians Week!! 🇺🇸💜❤️💗🇺🇸 and God Bless America!
I believe there already exists a large (20,000+ patients) ongoing experiment to see if hydroxychloroquine (HC) is effective in treating the Wuhan virus (WV) Officially named SARS-CoV-2.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Lupus patients have been taking HC for years. Since there are over 2 million RA and Lupus patients in the U.S., it seems that there is a built-in cohort for studying the efficacy of the HC on lessening the effects of the WV. Even with a low 1% prescription rate, that’s potentially 20,000+ subjects for a now on-going experiment that they never even knew they were a part of just 6 months ago. Since most of them have been on HC for 3 months or more, their body systems would be ‘full-up’ with it. So IF THERE IS ANY BENEFIT to HC treatment, these patients would be less likely to be affected by WV.
My daughter’s a PharmD in Las Vegas. When I first discussed HC with her over a month ago, she said “I fill that a lot out here for RA people.” Not a little, but a lot. Sure, exact number is in the mind of the beholder, but ‘a lot’ to me translates into more than the 1% I assumed above. One customer of hers was on HC for over 20 years. So if HC is ‘deadly’ as some in the news media have been saying, there would be a lot of dead RA/Lupus patients laying in the streets. Can it be deadly? Of course! That’s why it’s a prescription med.
She had received letters from the Nevada and the Iowa Boards of Pharmacy (she is licensed in both states) that scrips for HC/chloroquine were to be filled only for patients already taking them; 14 days or less; or as part of a trial. Reason given – docs were hoarding them for themselves or their families.
To quote from the article Dr. Michael Lockshin (rheumatologist at Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC) has on the hss.edu website:
“Unlike most drugs that work when blood levels rise a few hours after taking a pill, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine need to saturate the body to be effective. This is why it takes about three months from starting the drug to see its effect. If you stop taking the drug, it takes about three months to get rid of that which your body has stored.”
So it looks like it has a half-life of a few weeks to a month or so, either filling up the body or winding down when discontinuing usage. Any use of HC for a one-week protocol, say, to combat WV would be less likely to help than if the person had a ‘full-up’ body. But on the other hand, if a one-week protocol of HC DOES HELP alleviate symptoms, then it should be a flashing-lighthouse of alleviation for RA/Lupus patients already on HC. And RA/Lupus patients are already immuno-compromised, so the WV should have even more morbidity/mortality with them. Does it? Who has published that data?
So where is the government, and its NSA-style data collection, in identifying data about HC and WV? Is the government, or someone you know, looking at the rate of RA/Lupus patients getting the WV? So a simple 8th grade Hypothesis = “If HC is effective, (1)- then fewer RA/Lupus patients should get WV; or (2)- then the effects of WV should be lessened from 10?? days to 3?? days; or (3)- then no effect, it was a bad hypothesis and don’t use HC for non-RA patients.” If HC is really effective, there should be many fewer (or none) RA patients coming down with WV than expected. How many RA patients have come down with WV? If HC is of no use, and immuno-compromised RA patients are at more risk of WV, then there should be a passel of RA patients dying in the streets. Are they?
Have you looked at the number of RA patients contracting WV? Are you searching out RA patients for an about-to-start experiment? Is anyone from the govt. looking into this mass gathering of 20,000+ subjects for answers to the efficacy of HC? It seems that this should be low-hanging fruit, even with HIPAA rules.
Thanks.
Don Carrera
125 Suhan Drive
Irwin PA 15642
7247444347