"Dentists Can Resist, Too!": Dentist Day Edition

Hello to all of you, I took a month off and wanted to wait till DDOH passed to post again. My title takes a shot at the asinine RESIST bumper stickers sported by those who think they're gonna overturn an election. I emailed the DHAT bill's sponsor early on and told him he'd face strong resistance, which he has. I hope you all enjoyed the Super Bowl, it was the first time I'd watched an NFL game all season. They wanna kneel, I won't watch, it's that simple. This sheriff said it best with this billboard.

It was a good game and seeing the "gargling with Drano" look on Bill Belichick's face was fun! Congrats to the Eagles and their talented upstart QB. That said, this was a "defenseless" Super Bowl. My God, I've never seen 2 SB teams with such pitiful pass defenses, it was a question of who's secondary got torched the most, LOL. The NFL got clobbered this season in the wallet, let's see what they do next year.
 Before I get to DDOH, I just wanna touch on the Trump vs. coup plotters saga. As more and more facts are known, via things like emails between the traitorous conspirators that confirmed they knew the entire dossier ploy was a scam, the more this sham falls apart. The Left wanted to drag this thing into the Nov. midterm elections, maybe not so much now, eh? It's really quite simple, the Billary Machine hired an MI6 hack to fabricate a fictitious golden showers dossier and used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. To add insult to injury, it was renewed 3 times. Then there's the Lisa Page- Peter Strzok affair and tons of conversations about how determined they were to derail the Trump campaign.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/25/missing-text-messages-between-two-fbi-employees-have-been-located-according-to-department-justice-official.html
Clearly these egomaniacs didn't think Hillary could possibly lose and they figured when she won, all of this would be covered up and swept aside. Oops! Anyway, I think this will continue to unravel and fall apart. For me, simply having it go away is way too good the for the traitors. Many of these scumbags need to go to jail!
https://nypost.com/2018/01/10/the-trump-dossiers-credibility-is-collapsing/
Now let's talk about this Tuesday. I don't recall seeing the huge turnout we had for DDOH in many years, and we needed every one of them to show up. I'm pretty sure the S. Fla. turnout was a new record!

A few weeks ago I spoke to the Latin dental study club here and sounded the alarm. They were incredulous as to the procedures a high school grad with 3 years of vocational training could perform and with only general supervision, i.e. the dentist is playing golf. We've had many years of dud issues or housekeeping but there's nothing like a true threat to the way we practice and the detrimental effect on patients to rally the troops! 2 weeks ago, this DHAT bill was first heard in a House Healthcare subcommittee and the sponsor (Miami's own newly elected Rep. Daniel Perez) was already backpedaling. He knew he didn't have the votes to pass such a draconian invasion of our profession by people who even admit they are totally clueless about any aspect of it. So Perez did a strike all, which is basically drawing a line through every word of his original DHAT language, and amended it to be funding for a study to determine the causes of lack of access to care for the demographic of interest here. As if we haven't known those causes and their solutions for decades! They had people from Pew Foundation going up and even the former dean of UFCD, sellout shill, Frank Catalanotto, pleading for this bad piece of public policy. He talked about 168,000 visits to FL's emergency rooms for dental pain and how many of them were potentially life threatening infections. My counter to that is that there's no way in hell a DHAT is trained or equipped to treat this level of dental disease. These low access patients have some of the worst, most difficult dental problems to treat, not "simple" fillings or "simple" extractions. The amendment barely passed with the committee chair, Rep. Jason Brodeur, voting to break the tie. More on him later.
 This Tuesday was DDOH and a large number of us crowded into the committee room to hear the House Health Appropriations Committee consider whether or not to fund the sham study Perez kept in as a lifeline. Testimony and debate went long, hot and heavy. In the end, there were still not enough votes to pass the bill, so the committee chairman, Jason Brodeur, called for a T.P. (temporary postponement) and got it unanimously. What should have happened was taking a vote and this turkey killed for this year's session, not this stay of execution. Yes, it's a win to force these ridiculous maneuvers from the opposition because they have no other option, but it still leaves the issue dangling. It became clear to me Chmn. Brodeur is not our friend. The snide remark he slipped in about loan repayment, the true solution to placing dentists where the neediest poor patients are (which 45 states are currently doing) left no doubt. Brodeur remarked that he was against it and the marketplace should take care of this issue. Newsflash, Jason, the marketplace has already spoken loudly and clearly about this patient group. Medicaid pays crap, few of us wanna work for 30% of UCR, and these people are without a place to get their dental care! This guy can't possibly be so obtuse, I think it's pure cynicism and another factor. That factor is Brodeur's occupation is healthcare consultant. Look at his profile and it's clear why he's in favor of DHATs. This is a guy with a resume that's deep into managed care and Big Pharma!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-brodeur-0057b67
 Have any of you wondered why all this fervor for DHATs and what's really behind it? Aside from govt. and regulators sinking their meat hooks into dentistry, I believe there are some major McDentist big players who stand to get hefty, lucrative contracts if this thing ever becomes law. This reminds me of 15 years ago when ADI got a sweetheart deal for Medicaid pts., screwed over those few dentists who did treat Medicaid and gave a no-bid gift to Mike Fernandez- disgusting! But we're always admonished not to come off as self serving. Is there anyone more self serving than conflicted politicians? The Dem. Ranking Member, Rep. David Richardson met with us and told us he'd planned to vote the bill up. Anyone who'd heard the grilling he was giving Perez would have concluded the complete opposite. This is the BS Kabuki theater that many politicians often engage in, they say one thing but mean another. Richardson also told us when all we can do is send up a bunch of dentists to do nothing but oppose in unison, it looks very self serving. I wonder if David sees 2 committee hearings on a bad bill that lacks the support to pass, yet keeps getting bailed out, as self serving? I say this because it's well known that legislators don't like to humiliate one of their won. I guess they'd rather foist a bad law on unsuspecting Floridians than upset a green horn rookie who's clueless and out of his league.
 I can only hope this study dies without passage. At least the original DHAT language is DOA for this session. I've been reassured that they can't stick that language onto some new bill. I hope that's correct because Richardson told us he wouldn't be surprised if that happened. It's clear to me this issue isn't going away and we're gonna be fighting it for many years. BTW, the only state (lower 48) where DHATs practice is MN and in 10 years there are only a few in rural areas. Most are concentrated in Minneapolis- St. Paul. This bill has nothing to do with access to care and we must fight it with our last breath!