Ophthalmologist and surgeon Kris Held explained why she told Aetna she “cannot comply” with the insurance company’s new Obamacare stipulations, claiming she “can no longer be an enabler to the dysfunction harming patients.”
Held spoke with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto Wednesday about a letter she sent Jan. 30, where she regretfully stated she could no longer give care to patients covered under Aetna and was severing her contract with the company.
“Health insurance has evolved such that insurers and government have inserted themselves smack-dab in the middle of a once sacred patient doctor relationship,” she wrote at the time. “I am called a provider — not a doctor. My patient is now yours — not mine. … Obamacare contains every-changing-at-the-whim-of-HHS, politically-expedient mandates, rewards, penalties, rules and regulations with which I cannot rationally or morally treat my patients and run a practice, much less interpret, implement or comply.”
Cavuto asked what pushed Dr. Held to cancel her contract with Aetna and wash her hands of (at least part of) Obamacare. “The law really has divided [health-care professionals] up into two teams,” she explained. “We’ve got ‘Team Glitch’ over here — we have government, lobbyists, insurance companies and hospitals colluding. And on the other side — way over in a small corner — you have doctors and patients, really trying to survive as an inconvenient afterthought.”
“I just decided I can no longer be an enabler to the dysfunction that is harming patients,” she asserted. “They really are making a false promise of doctors’ services, of healthcare, of medications, and they’re not delivering.”
Dr. Held hopes that her patients with Aetna coverage — some of whom she’s seen for 15 years — will stick with her for care. “In reality, if we had real, true reform my patients could be able to see me outside of Aetna,” she said. “And really it would save money; instead of spending money on IRS agents and navigators and billers and bad ads we’d be able to spend the money on the patients. There are plans for real reform that do exist, and my patients have actually been very supportive.”
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