Dear Dr.
My name is Christopher L. Elder, M.D. and I am contributing Editor and Writer for Doctors of Courage and also an advisor to the American Pain Institute. As a healthcare professional, I am certain that you are aware that Physicians, Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, and Independent pharmacists are being zealously and maliciously prosecuted by state and federal agencies under the guise of the war on drugs. In a propaganda-filled and sensationalized effort, our own government is conflating the issues of illegal trafficking of street narcotics with a physician rendering medical care and providing pain management treatments in their offices.
This is occurring despite the fact that the government by its own admission has acknowledged that heroin and fentanyl are responsible for the vast majority of opioid-related overdose fatalities. Currently, despite our prestigious backgrounds, extensive academic and intellectual qualifications, and accolades, there is no safe way or fool-proof method to practice medicine or to prescribe and/or dispense controlled substances. Physicians such as myself who are Board Certified in Pain and in Addiction Medicine are targeted with little to no recourse. To state it bluntly, there are no safe parameters in which to treat pain or addiction in this overly-regulated, arbitrary and hostile climate.
As recently as today, physicians, and other healthcare providers are being charged with crimes including murder, distribution of narcotics, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, conspiracy to aid and abide the distribution of narcotics, “ selling narcotics” within 2000 feet of a school, selling narcotics in a public recreational facility i.e. a park, maintaining a drug-related facility i.e. the physician's office, possession of a firearm in the act of dispensing narcotics, money-laundering for accepting cash payments for co-payments, accepting “ kickbacks” for receiving an honorarium when speaking on behalf of a pharmaceutical product. Lastly, but certainly not least, physicians can be charged with healthcare fraud when a Law Enforcement Officer, with absolutely no medical training, makes the arbitrary inference that you have committed “fraud” because the patient that has been examined, diagnosed and treated to the best of your professional ability and in good faith, did not need that prescription and therefore, you, the trained medical professional issued that prescription “outside of the usual course of professional practice and for a reason other than a legitimate medical purpose”. The previously mentioned “outside the usual course” is a generic term that literally means nothing to a healthcare provider, and has been challenged as being “constitutionally vague”, however the lower Courts have consistently ruled that it is not “constitutionally vague”, while simultaneously declining to inform the medical community precisely what this phrase means.
As one distinguished physician whom was recently attacked put it these attacks are so far off course, that you do not even know how to respond”. If you are one of the professionals who is unaware of the violations and governmental overreach into the practice of medicine, I encourage you to visit the website “www.DoctorsofCourage.com” and navigate the site, which details governmental abuse against us.
The purpose of this letter is inform you that there will be a Congressional Hearing on this very matter on April 24, 25, 26, 2018 in Washington D.C. and we need your support. If you are not able to physically attend, we need you to help spread the word, and we ask for a financial contribution to assist physicians who have been financially decimated to travel and be in attendance. We are currently in the final phases of determining what we would like to see come out of these Congressional Hearings and we would like to obtain some input directly from you and some of your other colleagues that are familiar with what is occurring.
As it stands now a physician or any other healthcare practitioner can be entrapped, indicted, tried and convicted for simply adhering to established and recognized pain and addiction treatment protocols. The people investigating and making decisions about physicians are not medically-trained, nor do they typically have any particular qualifications beyond that of the a standard law-enforcement officer. And true to form, they are treating physicians not as professionals, but as drug dealers that they would find on any street corner. As such, physicians are then met with extreme hostility, perjured witness statements, withholding of exculpatory findings, coercion, intimidation, outright bold-face lies, Civil Asset Forfeiture, and this all occurs before you head into a perjury laced trial. Sadly, but all too often, many of our colleagues commit suicide feeling that this is the only solution.
We are asking for your help, because it is not everyday that physicians are afforded the opportunity to have an audience with the US Congress. As you also know, there is not a single Medical Board or major Medical Society that has stood up on the behalf of the very physicians that they have licensed or certified. We have no confidence that this will change anytime soon. As a consequence, we have been forced to embark on a grassroots movement to protect our once noble profession from governmental overreach and unjust persecution, and to have laws amended which place the decision on medical treatments back into the hands of the Medical professional. There is strength in numbers. And with Congressional attention and legislation, we have the chance to right the wrongs and restore justice and nobility back into the practice of medicine.
Please forward this letter to 5 colleagues who are affected by these issues.
Should you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out via email or telephone.
Respectfully
Christopher L . Elder, M.D.
Contributing Writer and Editor for Doctors of Courage
Advisory Committee for the American Pain Institute
Congressional Hearing Advisory Board Member
UVA0593@gmail.com
