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Open Letter: The Insider on the Informant!

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5. How is it possible that the healthcare debates are being limited to issues of payment and or reimbursement? In the current debate, we are ignoring a corrupt system that rewards doctors for denying service. We are currently failing to protect the public body as well as the "fiscal fisc and taxpayer funds, thus ignoring whistleblowers who would step forward to assure good healthcare, public safety, and national defense.

Unfortunately, we as individuals, coalitions, and as individual public interest groups can speak all too well to these questions. Those who seek to step forward and do what is right are generally faced with punitive measures that include loss of jobs or employment opportunities and alienation from professional and peer networks. Some retaliations result in the irreversible ruination of their entire lives, and in some cases prosecution, incarceration, threat and even loss of life itself. One of our own leaders, after speaking out on a health care fraud, was poisoned with arsenic in his home; others have been forced into homeless shelters with their families and had other attempts made on their lives as well.

Preeminent national defense whistleblower Ernie Fitzgerald endured the retaliation "play book during the Nixon Administration; first you isolate the "violator" who seeks to reveal the truth and correct a situation. Then you discredit them and if need be, ruin their reputation and make them appear unstable or even insane. You threaten or destroy their ability to have any livelihood at all though blacklisting. And if need be, you intimidate the friends and family, and start making others pay a price for the actions or support of a whistleblower. Frequently this causes co-workers, friends and family to turn on the whistleblower, causing them to be isolated even further.

Even more distressing is the sweeping corruption of the governmental and judicial processes themselves; those who did take action faced inaction by the courts for decades just to enforce protections already in place and/or to move their cases forward. As we embark on new discussions on healthcare and financial industry reform; whistleblowers protections must be part of the larger discussions to protect and assure our future as the country and people we aspire to be. We suggest that the practice and delivery side of healthcare with its suppression of voices be included in all discussions and reforms. We also suggest that the reasons they are not part of the discussion and formulae for solutions must also be part of the larger discussions and solutions.

In the end, if we do not protect and celebrate those who would step forward at potentially great personal cost in any case to provide that crucially needed information, how to we expect to ever actually understand all that has happened, is happening, and make a difference? It is one thing to make a movie that makes fun of one individual who, however caricatured, made a very real difference. It is potentially fatal as a nation to fail to recognize and support those amongst us who have and continue to risk all on the public's behalf, and a sure path to repeat history if we do not listen to them and hear. However entertaining this movie might be, we cannot let the public think whistleblowers are unstable and self serving or worse. Whether they appear from any source healthcare, national defense or any other area; we must protect those who dare to tell the truth.

In the interest in helping our great nation regain its footing and moral ground, we suggest the need stronger protections for whistleblowers. We ask all those who read this letter to support putting the protective legislation the Whistleblower Protection Act back in place and pass it so that we could have a truly open and legitimate discussion of what is wrong with our current system of protections for whistleblowers, healthcare and how to fix it. Most of all,we must never again find ourselves in circumstances that could have been prevented with something as simple as those who know the truth being able to share it, and for our government and its judicial limbs to protect and enforce it.

Sincerely,

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Michael McCray is a public interest advocate who combats racism and corruption in the government and other institutions which deprive individuals of their basic civil rights, human rights and constitutional liberties. McCray is co-chair (more...)
 

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