http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-rand-paul-tried-to-lead-an-eye-doctors-rebellion/2015/02/01/010994da-9cd6-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html By David A. Fahrenthold February 1 at 9:15 PM
The letters came from a young ophthalmologist in Kentucky. He was recruiting for an eye doctors’ rebellion.
“We won’t be trod upon,” he wrote, using the language of 1776. “You can’t promulgate injustice without consequences.”
By David A. Fahrenthold February 1 at 9:15 PM
The letters came from a young ophthalmologist in Kentucky. He was recruiting for an eye doctors’ rebellion.
“We won’t be trod upon,” he wrote, using the language of 1776. “You can’t promulgate injustice without consequences.”
(A letter from the National Board of Ophthalmology, the group that Rand Paul formed to issue its own certifications to ophthalmologists.)
The injustice he was talking about was a new rule, from the powerful group that deems American ophthalmologists to be “board-certified.” It required younger doctors to take a test that older doctors did not have to take.
The Kentucky doctor was so outraged that he seceded — and started his own Board of Ophthalmology, so he could certify himself.
“You can send a clear message to the establishment” by signing up to be certified by the new board, too, the letter said. “Check the appropriate box and return the card with your $500. Sincerely, Rand Paul, M.D.”
The letter, from about 2003, helps illuminate a little-understood (and mostly ridiculed) chapter of Paul’s life before politics: how he became a self-certified ophthalmologist.
The saga began in the 1990s, when Paul — now a senator representing Kentucky and a GOP presidential contender — hatched a plan to put his family’s free-market ideals into practice. He wouldn’t submit to the establishment. He would out-compete it by offering doctors an alternative with lower fees and fairer rules. His do-it-yourself medical board lasted more than a decade, becoming one of the most complex organizations Paul ever led on his own.
But it didn’t work. Indeed, in a life of successes, it became one of Paul’s biggest flops.
The board certified only 50 or 60 doctors, by Paul’s count, and was never accepted by the medical establishment. It failed partly because of resistance from the old guard — but also because Paul hurt his own cause with shortcuts and oversights that made his big effort seem small.
The other officers of his board, for instance, weren’t ophthalmologists. They were his wife and father-in-law. His Web site was mainly a mission statement, and his mission statement had grammatical errors. And, after Paul missed a filing deadline in 2000, the state legally dissolved his board. Although Paul kept it operating, it remained unrecognized by the state until he officially revived it in 2005.
“It was a good idea,” said Tim Conrad, an ophthalmologist in Louisville, who paid to be certified by Paul’s National Board of Ophthalmology. He eventually took the certificate off his wall. Now he can’t find it.
“It fell on its face,” Conrad said. “But I liked the idea.”
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