***NEWS RELEASE***

What Is True Health Freedom?

As Congress Holds Americans’ Health Care Fate in Their Hands, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom Continues to Call for a Return to Simplicity, Affordability and Confidentiality

PAUL, Minn.—Congress has pushed the pause button on the advancement of the Senate’s newly amended Better Care Reconciliation Act—and for good reason, says Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom’s (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) president and co-founder Twila Brase.

“Republicans made a commitment to the American people,” said Brase, who was in Washington, D.C., recently to meet with lawmakers about health care reform. “They committed to repealing Obamacare, and Americans put them in office to do it. Instead, Republicans are further embedding the federal controls, federal infrastructure, federal subsidies and federal dollars of Obamacare into federal law. The Senate bill is not a repeal. The House bill is not a repeal. What will Americans think when the people they put in power to repeal Obamacare only strengthen and lengthen the government’s grip on patients and doctors? This is a bill made for big insurers and big government. It’s not a bill for patients; it’s not a bill to restore freedom. It’s a bill to advance government-run health care and sustain Obamacare.”

CCHF’s commitment to health freedom goes far beyond government programs and policies. The advocacy organization also focuses on protecting patient privacy as the foundation for patient and doctor freedom, including requiring patient consent for the sharing of private medical data and the storage and use of newborn DNA, as well as educating Americans about concerns surrounding “evidence-based medicine,” genomic sequencing, health IT and many other timely health topics.

One of the ways CCHF seeks to restore health freedom, for both patients and doctors, is through the innovative initiative The Wedge, which marked one year in existence last week.

Today, more than 200 medical practices in 44 states around the country 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 restore simplicity, affordability and confidentiality.

Brase said The Wedge was born as a result of looking at the current state of health care—where high prices and government reporting 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 an impersonal bureaucratic process and managed care controls threaten medical ethics and inhibit the critically-important doctor-patient relationship.

“The Wedge of Health Freedom identifies America’s free-trade zone for health care,” Brase said. “Wedge practices were already operating nationwide, but patients had no way of finding them, so The Wedge draws the public’s attention to this patient-centered, freedom-embracing slice of American health care. The Wedge helps make the invisible visible and brings patients and doctors back together again for patient-friendly, pocketbook-friendly and privacy-friendly care. This is the ethical way medicine was practiced before managed care, and what it must become again.”

Through a CCHF survey to doctors, many offered similar feedback about how Wedge principles have transformed their practices, sharing some of the best aspects of operating third-party free.

“Having the FREEDOM to spend the appropriate amount of time with patients, not having to rush through incomplete care and still spend hours a day on administrative tasks,” recounted one physician.

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

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 The Wedge of Health Freedom, visit www.JointheWedge.com, The Wedge Facebook page or follow The Wedge on Twitter @wedgeoffreedom.

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