Walter R. Rhodes, DC, FCCC
Civil: Relating to community or to citizens; relating to the private rights of individuals and disputes between them and their institutions.
Civil Rights: Legally determined or mandated rights granted by law to every citizen.
Right: Conforming to moral law. True. Logical. Sound. Appropriate. Opportune.
Moral: Concern with right and wrong and the distinctions between them.
Procedures That are Violations of Civil and Moral Rights:
1. To require a patient to withstand a risk or potential risk or an unnecessary expense to be eligible for a public benefit is a violation of civil rights.
To require a patient to take a small dose of arsenic before allowing him a dose of needed antibiotic is understandably a despicable practice. But to require unneeded x-rays for Medicare patients before treatment is allowed seems so much more complicated.
(Perhaps the Medicare administration officials should double the number of x-rays and require them on every visit to cut the expense of certain Medicare programs immediately, and reduce the overall costs of Medicare over time.)
2. For regulatory agencies to pervert the will of a legislative body in the implementation of mandated programs is a violation of civil rights.
The people have access to their legislators and make their pleas and requests known to them, and they, in turn, are responsive to the will of the people, especially at the voting booth.
Regulatory agencies, however, answer to no one in implementing the will of congress or other legislative bodies and they feel free to receive a mandate, out of its intended meaning, place impossible guidelines in the administration of it, and otherwise subvert the will of the people.
In a strange phenomenon of our times, congress stands timidly by, thoroughly intimidated, and lets the regulatory agencies do as they wish.
Congress and the courts could stop the practice. So far, neither has shown the righteous indignation required to recapture control from runaway bureaucrats.
3. To utilize a system which is inherently designed to strip citizens of their rights or a portion of their rights or to lessen their right to utilize a public benefit with the mere passage of time is a violation of civil and moral rights.
Insurance companies use a false logic in the development of "averages" by which treatment is restricted. With the system currently in use, each succeeding year will automatically lower the average which is the figure used to determine number, course, and duration of allowable treatment.
Treatment should always be based on patient need, which is determined by examination and diagnosis. Statistics have no part in determining the needs of a particular patient in a particular circumstance.
4. For institutions held to be public trusts to ignore scientific facts when that ignorance accrues to their monetary benefit at the expense of the health and financial welfare of the patient is a violation of civil and moral rights.
The culpability is doubly increased if the policies of the public trusts are designed to maintain that lack of knowledge as a working day-to-day practice.
The practice of insurance companies regularly hiring as "consultants" men who have not maintained their professional skills and knowledge through post-graduate education, is no less odious than hiring men whose interests have been tainted by monetary payments or training in the service of the insurance company.
5. When a public trust institution repeatedly jumps to self- serving conclusions without benefit of facts; when that leap regularly or predictably causes monetary and/or health distress in persons whose interests are contractually obligated to be served by that institution; this is a violation of civil and moral rights.
An especially malignant rupture of logic occurs when a doctor's diagnosis is overruled because of a "lack of information"; but the very same non-knowledge is then used to dictate a treatment program by a person who has never seen the patient, his x-rays or his needs, and who may or may not be a properly qualified doctor of the appropriate discipline of healing arts.
Logic would demand that the patient be examined further. His interests would then be protected -- not abandoned, which generally is the next step of the insurance company.
