As American patriots who fully appreciate and enjoy the blessings of liberty secured to us by our forefathers, including the right to practice our profession free from illegitimate, burdensome federal regulations, we unite behind the Convention of States Project, an effort to use the constitutional power of the states to impose limitations on the power and scope of our overreaching federal government.
We seek to ensure that a convention to propose amendments, convened under the Convention of States Project application, will consider amendment proposals to accomplish the following purposes, thereby resolving these matters constitutionally and removing them from the purview of judicial opinion:
To carefully define Congress’ power to regulate commerce “among the several states,” which has been stretched far beyond its original meaning and is now interpreted to give Congress virtually unlimited power over private activity—including health care services and the practice of medicine—even within a single state.
To carefully define Congress’ power under the General Welfare Clause of Article I, Section 8, so as to reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that Congress may “tax” individuals for their failure to purchase certain types of health insurance.
"If you would like to practice the medicine you were trained as a physician to practice, you should join Physicians for COS. Insurance companies, federal agencies, and the government need to be removed from the equation of doctors working to treat their patients' illnesses and promote their patients' health. Patients deserve a physician who can advocate for their health without having to wrangle with bureaucrats and red tape.COS can make that happen."
Dr. Tom Coburn, former U.S. Senator from Oklahoma
Sign the Physicians for COS Pledge & COS Petition
I pledge to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution in its entirety--including its grant of power to the people, through their state legislatures, to use Article V to protect our nation from an abusive, overreaching federal government—and I pledge to educate my friends, family members, and neighbors about the importance of using this constitutional tool to protect our liberty.
COS Petition:
Dear Legislator, Our federal government is on a dangerous course. I believe it's time for real solutions. Please support calling a Convention of States to place fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials.
“If healthcare, health insurance and their technologies were allowed to freely compete as has information technology where every next invention makes the last invention decrease in price and two inventions ago obsolete, healthcare would be as wonderfully robust, high quality and inexpensive as is much of information technology. It is free market competition competition that makes gadgets such as the I-Phone amazingly complex yet simple to use and inexpensive enough for every person to afford one. Essentially everything that is wrong with healthcare delivery and health insurance is due to government regulation that started with government financing that is now involved in essentially every healthcare decision and has criminalized those decisions. In healthcare government is not benign, it is full on injurious and even pays millions of people to become and remain sick. After 15 years of aggressive advocacy for liberty in healthcare via conservative think tanks it is clear me the only solution is to change the rules to bring decision making back home via an amendments Convention of States.” Dr. Charles Willey Innovare Health Advocates St. Louis, Missouri
“I’m still looking for where it’s in the Constitution that citizens can be mandated to purchase health insurance… This could be the most momentous vote any [legislator] takes...” Dr. Keith Frederick Rolla, Missouri Missouri State Representative Dist. 121
“Washington DC has taken complete control over how a patient can spend their healthcare dollars, and financially forced us doctors to serve Washington instead of our patients. Having taken financial power away from patients and doctors, Washington won’t return it willingly, as they are selling it to the highest bidding lobbyist, and will do so even as the program drives the country bankrupt. Convention of States is the only solution to wrest the dollars away from Washington and give them back to our patients, so that we can serve them and not Washington lobbyists.” Dr. Dan Stock Indianapolis, IN
“No profession feels the full force of the federal government more than physicians. The medical profession is the most highly regulated profession in the United States. The practice of medicine is controlled, taxed, and regulated to the point of being destroyed by the heavy hand of the federal government.” Dr. Jeffery Barke, MD California
We have a growing cancer today known as the Obamacare.As a result physicians are no longer free to practice medicine.
No profession feels the full force of the federal government more than physicians. The medical profession is the most highly regulated profession in the United States. The practice of medicine is controlled, taxed, and regulated to the point of being destroyed by the heavy hand of the federal government.
Physicians are told how to bill, how much to charge, and how to treat patients. They are mandated to use expensive electronic medical records. The federally enacted HIPPA (Health Information Privacy and Portability Act) makes the communication between physicians and atients burdensome, inefficient,and expensive. Every physician is required by federal mandate to register with the government to obtain an NPI (national provider identifier.) We are required by federal law to obtain and pay for a license to prescribe medication through the DEA, which is separate from our state licensure.
This heavy hand of government not only oversees the largest federal health bureaucracy ever created, but by extension reaches into every state, every city, and every small town to regulate how every licensed physician practices the art of medicine and how citizens obtain care.
The treatment is also clear.
The prescription for a cure was written into our constitution by our founders. Article V of our constitution allows for the states to call for a convention of states to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government through the proposal of constitutional amendments.
Physicians should be the strongest supporters of this brilliantly-crafted states’ rights tool placed into our constitution by our founders.
I urge my fellow American physicians to join with me in supporting an Article V Convention of States to take back control of the practice of medicine.
It’s the only way that we can return the practice of
medicine back to the intimate relationship between a doctor and patient without interference by the
heavy hand of a distant, national government.
Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D.Family Physician Newport Beach, CA
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