For Immediate Release
June 25, 2018

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom’s ‘The Wedge’ Brings Patients and Doctors Together in a Third-Party-Free, Patient-Centered Network That Restores Simplicity, Affordability and Confidentiality

 

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Two years ago this week, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) made a major step forward in the ongoing transformation of America’s health care system. 

 

As part of its mission to defend patient and doctor freedom, CCHF unveiled an exciting new health freedom initiative on June 28, 2016. Today, more than 260 practitioners in 165 clinics across 44 states have joined The Wedge of Health Freedom (www.JointheWedge.com), which is using third-party-free direct payment to transform the entire health care system back to freedom and restoresimplicity, affordability and confidentiality.
 

The Wedge was launched to address America’s troubled health care system—where high prices and bureaucratic government reporting requirements are the norm; where one-size-fits-all treatments and narrow networks limit patient choices and tie doctors’ hands; where intrusive questionnaires and data-sharing without consent put patients’ privacy at risk; and where impersonal bureaucratic processes and managed care controls inhibit a true doctor-patient relationship. 
 

“Two years after its inception, The Wedge of Health Freedom remains a free-trade zone for health care,” said CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase. “Wedge practices were already operating nationwide, but patients had no way of finding them, so the goal of The Wedge is to draw the public’s attention to this patient-centered, freedom-embracing slice of American health care. The Wedge now helps make this invisible zone visible and brings patients and doctors back together again for patient-friendly, price-friendly and privacy-friendly care. This is the ethical way medical care once was and what it must become again.”
 

The Wedge is a nationwide movement to build public awareness, to make this attractive free-trade zone for health care visible, to legislatively defend it and to build it so large that it can never be taken away. The online center for The Wedge—www.JointheWedge.com—allows doctors to learn how they can operate a Wedge practice, as well as provides patients with a map of Wedge practices so they can find doctors who incorporate the eight Wedge principles:

1.   Transparent and affordable pricing

2.   Freedom of choice

3.   True patient privacy

4.   No government reporting

5.   No outside interference

6.   Cash-based pricing

7.   A protected patient-doctor relationship

8.   All patients welcome
 

Wedge doctor Kim Corba appreciates the ability to offer her Allentown, Pennsylvania, patients the health freedom that Wedge principles encourage. 

“I love practicing without the intrusion of the insurance companies,” Korba told CCHF. “Having that time to spend with the patient and establish that very special relationship with them, without having to worry about requirements of the insurance companies or the government, is extremely liberating—to feel that way and to be practicing the way it used to be 20 or 30 years ago.” 
 

CCHF also asked other Wedge doctors about their greatest joy in being third-party-free. Some of their responses were:

·     “More time to spend with each patient” and “personal relationship with patients”

·     “Freedom to work only for the patient” and “privacy for patients”

·     “Avoiding the headaches that come with the current insurance system”

·     “Not wasting time on bureaucratic and expensive nonsense”

·     “Ability to put patient-physician relationship front and center”

·     “Being able to give patients the time that truly makes a difference. Seeing the appreciation from patients and family members. Getting mittens made by patients, baked cookies, thank you cards...”

·     “I get to focus on my patients, not billing, coding and third-party payer requirements. I get extra time and flexibility to care for my patients how I see fit.”

·     “Got my life back”

The Wedge is positively impacting patients, too. One woman wrote to CCHF stating that she is uninsured but makes too much money to be eligible for Medicaid. Now that she is pregnant, she has had a hard time finding an obstetrician who will even see her because of her uninsured status. “So happy I found your site,” she shared. “It’s given me the hope I need.”

“Like this woman experienced, today’s health care system is filled with third-party payer dependency and costly billing routines. Many find it hard to remember what it was like to take cash for payment.” Brase said. “These third-party payment arrangements have inserted boatloads of time-consuming bureaucracy and costly requirements. In short, the mission of medicine—taking care of patients—is being lost to the business of health care. The Wedge connects patients and doctors in a trusted, ethical, caring relationship that’s free of burdensome third-party costs and controls.”
 

CCHF will soon release a groundbreaking book by Brase exposing how the government-imposed certified EHR has negatively affected both doctors and patients. Available this summer and published by Beaver’s Pond Press, “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records”will show how Congress forced doctors to install a data-collecting surveillance system in the exam room. It includes comments from doctors and hard facts from over 125 studies and reports about the impact of EHRs on privacy, patient care, costs and patient safety. 
 

Additionally, “Big Brother in the Exam Room”discusses how doctors and patients inside The Wedge are free from EHRs because Wedge doctors are not mandated to use government-certified systems. Brase’s extensively researched work also exposes how patient treatment decisions are controlled and tracked by the government-mandated EHR; shares specific steps back to freedom, privacy and patient safety; and communicates why Americans must act now.
         

For more information about CCHF, visit www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page or its Twitter feed @CCHFreedom. Also view the media page for CCHF here. For more about CCHF’s initiative The Wedge of Health Freedom, visit www.JointheWedge.com, The Wedge Facebook page or follow The Wedge on Twitter @WedgeofFreedom.

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