How does a doctor get away with misprescribing/overprescribing drugs that can be dangerous or even life threatening, on this large scale, and for so long???
This is an issue which I have studied extensively, and has affected me personally.
Licensing boards were set up ostensibly to protect public health; unfortunately, they have devolved into a cross between cronyism & state-sponsored extortion, pushing doctors into whatever supports the status quo and makes the board the most money, rather than what is actually in the best interests of public health.
Anyone can file a complaint, even someone who has never actually been a patient or set foot in the doctor's office. Doctors have been targeted for investigation because they underwent marital counseling years ago, or because they wore too much cologne and someone thought they smelled like alcohol. And once an allegation has been made, there is little chance of making it through an investigation unscathed - if the board has to spend any time or money looking into a matter, they will inevitably find some way of recouping their costs.
A doctor accused of suspected substance abuse issues or mental health concerns is often given a choice: go along with the board, be placed on probation, and be forced into "treatment" programs that are in cahoots with the board, with fees of $50k or more, essentially having their license held for ransom (Kernon Manion does an excellent job of going into the details of how these schemes work). If they refuse, the board drives them through a sham hearing, denies them access to their own health records, pays trumped-up "experts" to diagnose them under dubious pretenses, and hits them with huge fines & career-ending black marks, even if they have never been convicted of any crime, there is no evidence that patient care was ever placed at risk or standards of care were not being met, and despite any evidence that the doctor does not actually have any substance abuse or mental health issues. There's no real oversight of board decisions - in a hearing, the judge only makes recommendations, which the board is free to ignore, and appeals are time-consuming & expensive, with little chance of success. And of course only excessive punishments get appealed - were it not for the work of real, independent journalists such as yourself, these excessively light sentences would never be subjected to any judicial oversight or brought to the attention of the public.
In this case, I would guess that, because he's going along with the prescription drug model and thus still making money for big pharma, they went easy on him despite actual risks to patient safety. Many other doctors who challenge the paradigm by suggesting that the childhood vaccine schedule may be doing more harm than good (such as Dr. Shari Tenpenny) or by promoting COVID treatments other than the mRNA vaccine like hydroquinone (such as the member doctors of the FLCCC community) end up having their licenses suspended even though there may be no patient complaints, no evidence of any risk to public health, and no valid reasons for the board to get involved.
The boards don't care about the damage caused to public health by depriving a community of a caring, skilled physician. It happened to a friend of mine, who turned in his licensing renewal one day late. The board refused to accept it, considered his license invalid, and charged him with treating patients without a license, demanding he pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Once his name was in their crosshairs, they reviewed his private record (which, as a government agency, they have access to, regardless of whether or not the doctor consents) and, finding he had been arrested for a DWI several years ago, required him to undergo evaluation & treatment for alcohol as well — even though he had been acquitted of the charge, he had no other arrests, there were no complaints from any of his patients, and there was no evidence that his drinking had ever affected his clinical practice in any way. Normally, arrests not resulting in a conviction cannot be used as part of the decision-making process regarding professional licensure; healthcare boards, for some reason, are exempt from this law.
My friend wanted to fight it, but his lawyer knew it would do no good — the state always sides with the board. Refusing to follow the board’s rulings meant no other state would license him, so he was forced to shut down his practice, leave the community he grew up in, and move overseas for several years. Eventually, he returned to the states, but had to set up practice in a neighboring state, as he was now forever forbidden from being licensed in his home state due to his defiance— all because he was a day late turning in a form, and the board saw it as an opportunity to engage in state-sanctioned extortion. He was the only doctor in the entire state who provided a specialized form of care for a common spinal condition; ever since he left, patients suffering from this condition no longer have any options for treatment other than an expensive & controversial surgery that leaves many worse-off in the long-term.
Another friend of mine was at a health fair when a local politician he supported stopped by his booth, and requested a simple & harmless therapy, which my friend provided for free. The politician later changed his stance on an important issue and my friend withdrew his support. In retaliation, the politician reported him to the state board for failing to obtain informed consent. The politician & several witnesses confirmed that he had verbally consented to the procedure, there was no evidence that the doctor had failed to meet standards of care, cause any harm, or place him at risk in any way, and it was well-established that this was a one-time slip-up, not a pattern, as he always obtained signatures from patients in his clinic. Nevertheless, because he didn’t get a signature this one time, he lost his license for two years, and since state law requires the owner of any business offering health services to have a license in that field, he was forced to shut down the business he had spent nearly twenty years building and start all over again from scratch after regaining licensure two years later. Had he been the sole provider, his family would likely have been forced into bankruptcy — fortunately, his wife was a successful businesswoman, and she was able to support them through the calamity — but he estimated that the damage to their family's finances was easily over a million dollars.
It happened to another friend of mine, whose patient was upset after he turned her past-due bill into collections. She complained to the board, and their investigation ultimately found that her complaint had no merit. Rather than close the case, however, they kept investigating the doctor until they finally found a reason to penalize him & recover the money they had spent on their investigation — a minor error in his recordkeeping, easily correctable, for which they fined him ten thousand dollars. He had recently gone through a divorce which had decimated his savings, and was unable to pay it. Rather than allow him to continue practicing & pay it over time, the board revoked his license. This does not seem to make sense until you consider that, to the board, a ten-thousand dollar fine is the equivalent of twenty years of annual fees. They don’t care if a doctor returns to practice or not, or how their decision affects public health — after all, in his case, there was nothing related to patient safety whatsoever. For the state boards, public health is just the mask they use to hide their greed & lust for power.
And yes, it happened to me. This is what motivated me to look deeper into administrative law & the conduct of state healthcare licensing boards, and to write about these issues: I have not only read about them & heard about them from others, I have personally experienced them.
My ex-wife made a series of allegations against me during our divorce to the local police. Despite having no evidence to support her accusations, the local police believed her & refused to listen to me or review the mountain of evidence I had proving her claims were false. After my wife & I had separated, a patient of mine exploited my emotional vulnerability, leading me to believe there was a mutual attraction. Heartbroken & lonely, I engaged in a brief three-week romance consisting of nothing more than hugs & text messages. After searching for the best way to handle the situation, I regretfully dismissed her as a patient & referred her to another doctor, seeking to adhere to the full two year time frame before engaging in a relationship with her, as required by board statutes.
Once she realized I would not be swayed from my decision to refrain from treating her for two years and thus had no further use to her, she filed a complaint against me, turning over our private correspondence as well as deeply personal conversations she had recorded without my knowledge, while keeping thousands of dollars in therapy equipment I had lent to her. Despite hugs being the extent of the physical interactions between us, I was found guilty of sexual misconduct. My former patient’s claim that her condition deteriorated in the absence of my care was used against me as evidence that she had suffered as a result of my actions— but had I continued treating her, that would have been used against me as well. Her own degree of accountability & personal responsibility, as well as the possibility that a doctor might be the victim of a manipulative & vengeful patient, were simply never considered.
The police officer lied under oath, claiming I had confessed to having a problem with drugs & alcohol when I had done no such thing. My interview with the officer had been recorded & transcripted — the proof that he was lying was obvious for anyone to see. The board, however, was not interested in the truth, but rather in promoting their false narrative. They paid an expert to claim that I had severe drug & alcohol use disorders — without ever speaking with me, conducting any sort of examination, or following any of the established guidelines for diagnosing someone with a substance use disorder, and despite the board statutes explicitly stating the board must conduct an evaluation prior to revoking a doctor’s license. When challenged, the board admitted they knew this was a requirement, but chose not to follow it. Three months of random testing (which their own expert stated was the only way to be sure an addiction did not exist) returned nothing but negative results, numerous patients & co-workers who interacted with me on a daily basis for years testified that they never once saw me display any signs of intoxication or substance abuse, and the administrative law judge overseeing the case stated that the board failed to prove habitual intemperance — none of it mattered, nor did it prevent the board from saying whatever it wanted.
My lawyers hired a forensic psychologist to evaluate me, but somehow forgot to speak with him before the hearing (in all his decades of serving as an expert witness, he mentioned to me that this never happened before), and so he was never provided with highly important information. In the absence of any reason to believe otherwise, he assumed all of the allegations were true. He never diagnosed me with any mental health condition, I have no history of any issues, and there was no evidence that my care was anything less than excellent - it did not matter. The board saw an excuse to tack on another offense, and so they claimed I had a mental health condition that prevented me from meeting basic standards of care. The nature of the alleged impairment, and how exactly it prevented me from caring for patients, was never specified, nor did it matter that every single patient said my care was phenomenal or that many of them said I was the best chiropractor they had ever seen. It's been five years, now, raising my three sons on my own, without a hint of any problems, five years during which I was never given a chance to prove my sobriety & competence, despite the board statutes specifically stating that I be allowed to do so. They know I don't actually have any substance abuse or mental health issues; they just don't care. They intentionally misrepresented the status of a previous complaint against me, keeping it open long after it became obvious that it had no merit, just so they could use it against me at the hearing and make it look like I had a pattern of misconduct - they will persecute a doctor for making false or misleading claims, yet just like all other abusers, tyrants, & hypocrites, they have no issue doing so themselves.
The malicious & incongruent claims of a manipulative & deceitful former patient; the biased & inaccurate testimony of witnesses who interacted with me once, twice, or even not at all; the opinion of supposed experts who never interacted with me in any way — that was enough for the board to destroy my potential, my finances, my career, & my family’s future. The testimony of numerous patients & co-workers who saw me on a daily basis over years and had nothing but good things to say; the years I had spent teaching other doctors; the advanced training in research & spinal disorders I had received from Harvard University & recognized experts from around the world — none of that mattered.
The most valuable thing I owned — what had taken me decades of work to achieve and cost me over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans, my ability to provide for my family, my source of purpose & my passion in life — was taken from me, and my once-stellar reputation was irreparably tarnished.
The patients I might have helped, the research I might have done, the doctors I might have taught & all the patients they might have helped, the value of what was lost & the harm caused to public health by the board’s duplicitous & deceitful actions — none of it can ever be measured or fully known. What I do know for certain is that I will never agree to pay the fines & satisfy the conditions for offenses of which I am not guilty, and so my career in healthcare is effectively over.
I've tried for years to hire a lawyer to help me file a civil case against the board for depriving me of property without a fair trial and without clear & convincing evidence to support their claims. Most lawyers won't even listen to my story - as soon as they hear that it involves taking on a state board, they decline to take the case. In many states, licensing boards share resources, staffing, & buildings — it is not uncommon for a lawyer challenging a medical board on behalf of a doctor to suddenly find his own license to practice law suddenly subjected to unwarranted & invasive scrutiny. Much like lawyers who represent whistleblowers in suits against the federal government, anyone taking on the apparatus of the state licensing bureaucracy exposes themselves to the attacks of a corrupt system devoted to protecting its position as the ultimate authority — sacrosanct, unchallengeable, and irrefutable.
In the state where I live, a brilliant man who held doctorates in both healthcare & jurisprudence found himself the victim of an unfair board decision; incensed, he publicly denounced the board & vowed to expose their malfeasance. The bar association & the healthcare board teamed up to discredit & destroy him, and after a year of their attacks, he vanished from the professional sphere — no one knows where he is today, and a Google search of his name turns up only the board’s version of the story and media organizations obediently repeating it. The patients who lost access to the treatment & knowledge he provided, the clients who could no longer benefit from his assistance in fighting against the injustices they suffered, and the side of the story he had a right to share — all were ruthlessly silenced.
Freed from the consequences of their decisions, having tacit approval from the governor’s office & the state legislature, and unbeholden to the results of any election or judicial review, it should come as no surprise that “protecting public safety” has become an empty, meaningless platitude, used to justify countless civil rights violations, deprive communities of skilled & caring physicians, and unjustly persecute any doctor who promotes alternatives to the mainstream approach or poses a political or competitive threat to established institutions.
The damage done to communities is incalcuable, and I have little hope to believe that anything will change. Due to the fact that it is only a fraction of a fraction of the population who are directly impacted by unjust board decisions — and those doctors who are typically walk away like me, impoverished & humiliated, with their reputation & finances in ruins — getting anyone to care about even the most blatant & heinous violations of doctors’ civil rights is an effort in futility.
It is extremely ironic that the state licensing boards — the agencies responsible for judging the conduct of others — have no one auditing their own conduct, and enjoy the privilege of qualified immunity, making it extremely difficult to hold them accountable for unethical or deceptive conduct. They are not elected but rather appointed by the governor — based not upon merit or qualification, but upon the size of their contribution to his election campaign — and although a national organization to promote standards & best practices exists (the Federation of State Medical Boards, or FSMB), it has no real authority or power over the boards themselves. Once established, the legislature rarely makes any changes of significance to professional licensing policies, and the administrative law judges who oversee contested case hearings merely issue recommendations (which the board can ignore without any consequences). On the few occasions when an appeal is made (in my state, with my board, this has only happened twice in the past twenty-five years), the appellate judges tend to defer to the perceived expertise of the board, granting significant leeway to their decisions. This has the practical effect of discouraging further challenges — why bother, when even the most egregious board misconduct is overlooked?
A licensing board operates under the tenets of administrative law — the lowest tier of the justice system, below civil law, with criminal law at the top. Many of the rights we assume to possess — such as the presumption of innocence, and the right to to remain silent — do not exist at this level. This means that a doctor can be investigated by the board based upon accusations of misconduct in their personal life, and if they object to this intrusive inquiry into their privacy & choose not to share intimate, sometimes embarrassing details that have no relevance to their professional career, then the board is free to assume the accusations are true, even if there is no other evidence to support the allegations, and use their silence as evidence of their guilt. Any information they do share will be carefully & maliciously scutinized for ways it can be twisted & used against them — leaving the doctor trapped in a vicious catch-22, damned no matter what they do.
Since fines are determined not by the severity of the offense but by the amount spent by the board in pursuing the case, doctors who do not agree to the board's offer and insist upon a case hearing will be portrayed in the worst possible light and are practically guaranteed to be found guilty, regardless of the facts. If they are found innocent, then the board has no way of recouping the amount spent on the investigation & the hearing. The extensive list of statutes & regulations that a doctor is expected to follow are vaguely defined (I have yet to find anyone who can explain what, exactly, is entailed by “moral turpitude”) and highly subjective, allowing for significant leeway in their interpretation & enforcement. This is why extensive investigations are practically guaranteed to find evidence of misconduct, even when the alleged misconduct is minor & the evidence is tenuous at best, while obvious instances of serious wrongdoing that pose serious risks to patient health yet require little investigation can receive relatively minor penalties in comparison.
Licensing boards have gradually crept farther away from their original purpose and expanded the gray areas of their control, until ethics, justice, fairness, & basic human rights have been lost to the darkness.
How does a doctor get away with misprescribing/overprescribing drugs that can be dangerous or even life threatening, on this large scale, and for so long???
This is an issue which I have studied extensively, and has affected me personally.
Licensing boards were set up ostensibly to protect public health; unfortunately, they have devolved into a cross between cronyism & state-sponsored extortion, pushing doctors into whatever supports the status quo and makes the board the most money, rather than what is actually in the best interests of public health.
Anyone can file a complaint, even someone who has never actually been a patient or set foot in the doctor's office. Doctors have been targeted for investigation because they underwent marital counseling years ago, or because they wore too much cologne and someone thought they smelled like alcohol. And once an allegation has been made, there is little chance of making it through an investigation unscathed - if the board has to spend any time or money looking into a matter, they will inevitably find some way of recouping their costs.
A doctor accused of suspected substance abuse issues or mental health concerns is often given a choice: go along with the board, be placed on probation, and be forced into "treatment" programs that are in cahoots with the board, with fees of $50k or more, essentially having their license held for ransom (Kernon Manion does an excellent job of going into the details of how these schemes work). If they refuse, the board drives them through a sham hearing, denies them access to their own health records, pays trumped-up "experts" to diagnose them under dubious pretenses, and hits them with huge fines & career-ending black marks, even if they have never been convicted of any crime, there is no evidence that patient care was ever placed at risk or standards of care were not being met, and despite any evidence that the doctor does not actually have any substance abuse or mental health issues. There's no real oversight of board decisions - in a hearing, the judge only makes recommendations, which the board is free to ignore, and appeals are time-consuming & expensive, with little chance of success. And of course only excessive punishments get appealed - were it not for the work of real, independent journalists such as yourself, these excessively light sentences would never be subjected to any judicial oversight or brought to the attention of the public.
In this case, I would guess that, because he's going along with the prescription drug model and thus still making money for big pharma, they went easy on him despite actual risks to patient safety. Many other doctors who challenge the paradigm by suggesting that the childhood vaccine schedule may be doing more harm than good (such as Dr. Shari Tenpenny) or by promoting COVID treatments other than the mRNA vaccine like hydroquinone (such as the member doctors of the FLCCC community) end up having their licenses suspended even though there may be no patient complaints, no evidence of any risk to public health, and no valid reasons for the board to get involved.
The boards don't care about the damage caused to public health by depriving a community of a caring, skilled physician. It happened to a friend of mine, who turned in his licensing renewal one day late. The board refused to accept it, considered his license invalid, and charged him with treating patients without a license, demanding he pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Once his name was in their crosshairs, they reviewed his private record (which, as a government agency, they have access to, regardless of whether or not the doctor consents) and, finding he had been arrested for a DWI several years ago, required him to undergo evaluation & treatment for alcohol as well — even though he had been acquitted of the charge, he had no other arrests, there were no complaints from any of his patients, and there was no evidence that his drinking had ever affected his clinical practice in any way. Normally, arrests not resulting in a conviction cannot be used as part of the decision-making process regarding professional licensure; healthcare boards, for some reason, are exempt from this law.
My friend wanted to fight it, but his lawyer knew it would do no good — the state always sides with the board. Refusing to follow the board’s rulings meant no other state would license him, so he was forced to shut down his practice, leave the community he grew up in, and move overseas for several years. Eventually, he returned to the states, but had to set up practice in a neighboring state, as he was now forever forbidden from being licensed in his home state due to his defiance— all because he was a day late turning in a form, and the board saw it as an opportunity to engage in state-sanctioned extortion. He was the only doctor in the entire state who provided a specialized form of care for a common spinal condition; ever since he left, patients suffering from this condition no longer have any options for treatment other than an expensive & controversial surgery that leaves many worse-off in the long-term.
Another friend of mine was at a health fair when a local politician he supported stopped by his booth, and requested a simple & harmless therapy, which my friend provided for free. The politician later changed his stance on an important issue and my friend withdrew his support. In retaliation, the politician reported him to the state board for failing to obtain informed consent. The politician & several witnesses confirmed that he had verbally consented to the procedure, there was no evidence that the doctor had failed to meet standards of care, cause any harm, or place him at risk in any way, and it was well-established that this was a one-time slip-up, not a pattern, as he always obtained signatures from patients in his clinic. Nevertheless, because he didn’t get a signature this one time, he lost his license for two years, and since state law requires the owner of any business offering health services to have a license in that field, he was forced to shut down the business he had spent nearly twenty years building and start all over again from scratch after regaining licensure two years later. Had he been the sole provider, his family would likely have been forced into bankruptcy — fortunately, his wife was a successful businesswoman, and she was able to support them through the calamity — but he estimated that the damage to their family's finances was easily over a million dollars.
It happened to another friend of mine, whose patient was upset after he turned her past-due bill into collections. She complained to the board, and their investigation ultimately found that her complaint had no merit. Rather than close the case, however, they kept investigating the doctor until they finally found a reason to penalize him & recover the money they had spent on their investigation — a minor error in his recordkeeping, easily correctable, for which they fined him ten thousand dollars. He had recently gone through a divorce which had decimated his savings, and was unable to pay it. Rather than allow him to continue practicing & pay it over time, the board revoked his license. This does not seem to make sense until you consider that, to the board, a ten-thousand dollar fine is the equivalent of twenty years of annual fees. They don’t care if a doctor returns to practice or not, or how their decision affects public health — after all, in his case, there was nothing related to patient safety whatsoever. For the state boards, public health is just the mask they use to hide their greed & lust for power.
And yes, it happened to me. This is what motivated me to look deeper into administrative law & the conduct of state healthcare licensing boards, and to write about these issues: I have not only read about them & heard about them from others, I have personally experienced them.
My ex-wife made a series of allegations against me during our divorce to the local police. Despite having no evidence to support her accusations, the local police believed her & refused to listen to me or review the mountain of evidence I had proving her claims were false. After my wife & I had separated, a patient of mine exploited my emotional vulnerability, leading me to believe there was a mutual attraction. Heartbroken & lonely, I engaged in a brief three-week romance consisting of nothing more than hugs & text messages. After searching for the best way to handle the situation, I regretfully dismissed her as a patient & referred her to another doctor, seeking to adhere to the full two year time frame before engaging in a relationship with her, as required by board statutes.
Once she realized I would not be swayed from my decision to refrain from treating her for two years and thus had no further use to her, she filed a complaint against me, turning over our private correspondence as well as deeply personal conversations she had recorded without my knowledge, while keeping thousands of dollars in therapy equipment I had lent to her. Despite hugs being the extent of the physical interactions between us, I was found guilty of sexual misconduct. My former patient’s claim that her condition deteriorated in the absence of my care was used against me as evidence that she had suffered as a result of my actions— but had I continued treating her, that would have been used against me as well. Her own degree of accountability & personal responsibility, as well as the possibility that a doctor might be the victim of a manipulative & vengeful patient, were simply never considered.
The police officer lied under oath, claiming I had confessed to having a problem with drugs & alcohol when I had done no such thing. My interview with the officer had been recorded & transcripted — the proof that he was lying was obvious for anyone to see. The board, however, was not interested in the truth, but rather in promoting their false narrative. They paid an expert to claim that I had severe drug & alcohol use disorders — without ever speaking with me, conducting any sort of examination, or following any of the established guidelines for diagnosing someone with a substance use disorder, and despite the board statutes explicitly stating the board must conduct an evaluation prior to revoking a doctor’s license. When challenged, the board admitted they knew this was a requirement, but chose not to follow it. Three months of random testing (which their own expert stated was the only way to be sure an addiction did not exist) returned nothing but negative results, numerous patients & co-workers who interacted with me on a daily basis for years testified that they never once saw me display any signs of intoxication or substance abuse, and the administrative law judge overseeing the case stated that the board failed to prove habitual intemperance — none of it mattered, nor did it prevent the board from saying whatever it wanted.
My lawyers hired a forensic psychologist to evaluate me, but somehow forgot to speak with him before the hearing (in all his decades of serving as an expert witness, he mentioned to me that this never happened before), and so he was never provided with highly important information. In the absence of any reason to believe otherwise, he assumed all of the allegations were true. He never diagnosed me with any mental health condition, I have no history of any issues, and there was no evidence that my care was anything less than excellent - it did not matter. The board saw an excuse to tack on another offense, and so they claimed I had a mental health condition that prevented me from meeting basic standards of care. The nature of the alleged impairment, and how exactly it prevented me from caring for patients, was never specified, nor did it matter that every single patient said my care was phenomenal or that many of them said I was the best chiropractor they had ever seen. It's been five years, now, raising my three sons on my own, without a hint of any problems, five years during which I was never given a chance to prove my sobriety & competence, despite the board statutes specifically stating that I be allowed to do so. They know I don't actually have any substance abuse or mental health issues; they just don't care. They intentionally misrepresented the status of a previous complaint against me, keeping it open long after it became obvious that it had no merit, just so they could use it against me at the hearing and make it look like I had a pattern of misconduct - they will persecute a doctor for making false or misleading claims, yet just like all other abusers, tyrants, & hypocrites, they have no issue doing so themselves.
The malicious & incongruent claims of a manipulative & deceitful former patient; the biased & inaccurate testimony of witnesses who interacted with me once, twice, or even not at all; the opinion of supposed experts who never interacted with me in any way — that was enough for the board to destroy my potential, my finances, my career, & my family’s future. The testimony of numerous patients & co-workers who saw me on a daily basis over years and had nothing but good things to say; the years I had spent teaching other doctors; the advanced training in research & spinal disorders I had received from Harvard University & recognized experts from around the world — none of that mattered.
The most valuable thing I owned — what had taken me decades of work to achieve and cost me over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans, my ability to provide for my family, my source of purpose & my passion in life — was taken from me, and my once-stellar reputation was irreparably tarnished.
The patients I might have helped, the research I might have done, the doctors I might have taught & all the patients they might have helped, the value of what was lost & the harm caused to public health by the board’s duplicitous & deceitful actions — none of it can ever be measured or fully known. What I do know for certain is that I will never agree to pay the fines & satisfy the conditions for offenses of which I am not guilty, and so my career in healthcare is effectively over.
I've tried for years to hire a lawyer to help me file a civil case against the board for depriving me of property without a fair trial and without clear & convincing evidence to support their claims. Most lawyers won't even listen to my story - as soon as they hear that it involves taking on a state board, they decline to take the case. In many states, licensing boards share resources, staffing, & buildings — it is not uncommon for a lawyer challenging a medical board on behalf of a doctor to suddenly find his own license to practice law suddenly subjected to unwarranted & invasive scrutiny. Much like lawyers who represent whistleblowers in suits against the federal government, anyone taking on the apparatus of the state licensing bureaucracy exposes themselves to the attacks of a corrupt system devoted to protecting its position as the ultimate authority — sacrosanct, unchallengeable, and irrefutable.
In the state where I live, a brilliant man who held doctorates in both healthcare & jurisprudence found himself the victim of an unfair board decision; incensed, he publicly denounced the board & vowed to expose their malfeasance. The bar association & the healthcare board teamed up to discredit & destroy him, and after a year of their attacks, he vanished from the professional sphere — no one knows where he is today, and a Google search of his name turns up only the board’s version of the story and media organizations obediently repeating it. The patients who lost access to the treatment & knowledge he provided, the clients who could no longer benefit from his assistance in fighting against the injustices they suffered, and the side of the story he had a right to share — all were ruthlessly silenced.
Freed from the consequences of their decisions, having tacit approval from the governor’s office & the state legislature, and unbeholden to the results of any election or judicial review, it should come as no surprise that “protecting public safety” has become an empty, meaningless platitude, used to justify countless civil rights violations, deprive communities of skilled & caring physicians, and unjustly persecute any doctor who promotes alternatives to the mainstream approach or poses a political or competitive threat to established institutions.
The damage done to communities is incalcuable, and I have little hope to believe that anything will change. Due to the fact that it is only a fraction of a fraction of the population who are directly impacted by unjust board decisions — and those doctors who are typically walk away like me, impoverished & humiliated, with their reputation & finances in ruins — getting anyone to care about even the most blatant & heinous violations of doctors’ civil rights is an effort in futility.
It is extremely ironic that the state licensing boards — the agencies responsible for judging the conduct of others — have no one auditing their own conduct, and enjoy the privilege of qualified immunity, making it extremely difficult to hold them accountable for unethical or deceptive conduct. They are not elected but rather appointed by the governor — based not upon merit or qualification, but upon the size of their contribution to his election campaign — and although a national organization to promote standards & best practices exists (the Federation of State Medical Boards, or FSMB), it has no real authority or power over the boards themselves. Once established, the legislature rarely makes any changes of significance to professional licensing policies, and the administrative law judges who oversee contested case hearings merely issue recommendations (which the board can ignore without any consequences). On the few occasions when an appeal is made (in my state, with my board, this has only happened twice in the past twenty-five years), the appellate judges tend to defer to the perceived expertise of the board, granting significant leeway to their decisions. This has the practical effect of discouraging further challenges — why bother, when even the most egregious board misconduct is overlooked?
A licensing board operates under the tenets of administrative law — the lowest tier of the justice system, below civil law, with criminal law at the top. Many of the rights we assume to possess — such as the presumption of innocence, and the right to to remain silent — do not exist at this level. This means that a doctor can be investigated by the board based upon accusations of misconduct in their personal life, and if they object to this intrusive inquiry into their privacy & choose not to share intimate, sometimes embarrassing details that have no relevance to their professional career, then the board is free to assume the accusations are true, even if there is no other evidence to support the allegations, and use their silence as evidence of their guilt. Any information they do share will be carefully & maliciously scutinized for ways it can be twisted & used against them — leaving the doctor trapped in a vicious catch-22, damned no matter what they do.
Since fines are determined not by the severity of the offense but by the amount spent by the board in pursuing the case, doctors who do not agree to the board's offer and insist upon a case hearing will be portrayed in the worst possible light and are practically guaranteed to be found guilty, regardless of the facts. If they are found innocent, then the board has no way of recouping the amount spent on the investigation & the hearing. The extensive list of statutes & regulations that a doctor is expected to follow are vaguely defined (I have yet to find anyone who can explain what, exactly, is entailed by “moral turpitude”) and highly subjective, allowing for significant leeway in their interpretation & enforcement. This is why extensive investigations are practically guaranteed to find evidence of misconduct, even when the alleged misconduct is minor & the evidence is tenuous at best, while obvious instances of serious wrongdoing that pose serious risks to patient health yet require little investigation can receive relatively minor penalties in comparison.
Licensing boards have gradually crept farther away from their original purpose and expanded the gray areas of their control, until ethics, justice, fairness, & basic human rights have been lost to the darkness.