Press Release: In defense of Senator Galloway’s review of medical excuses

In defense of Senator Galloway’s review of medical excuses

2/22/2011
Contact: Evan Nehring, Republican Party Marathon County PR Chair, rpmc.wi.pr@gmail.com
February 22, 2010 (Wausau, WI) –

Marathon County Democrats have criticized Senator Pam Galloway’s review of on-street medical excuses given at recent Madison protests, saying this review is unfounded and unnecessarily accusatory. We find that the photographic and video evidence online raises serious concerns.

The Atlantic reported Monday a conversation with the head of Wisconsin’s Center for Bioethics:

After viewing the videos at my request last night, Dr. Arthur Derse called me up exclaiming, “Holy mackerel! It’s much worse than it looked in the paper. I’m stunned, absolutely stunned.” Dr. Derse is the Director of Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “When all’s said and done, it’s really the profession of medicine that has the black eye in this case,” he says.

There is no question these doctors are masking political opinion in the white coat of the medical profession, Dr. Derse believes. “The videos are pretty damning.”

It’s sad, but what puzzles me most is how in the world three of the four physicians I can identify from these videos and other media reports are faculty members of UW’s Family Medicine department, and one is a senior resident in that same department. It’s a good training program, committed to providing sorely-needed primary care doctors to the state of Wisconsin. It teaches professionalism, and its faculty are supposed to model integrity. What were they thinking?

They’ve managed to belittle a public trust between physicians, employers and patients. A doctor’s sick note is a serious document. It represents an employer’s desire to verify through a respected, independent, medically qualified third party the fact of an illness and the true need for convalescence. In the videos now circulating online, we witness multiple members of a noted family medicine department trash one of the well-recognized rights and privileges of their profession, with little forethought as to the consequences.

If Director Derse holds this incident worthy of review, we believe Senator Galloway’s simple request to have the situation looked at is the only responsible position.

Both supporters and opponents of Governor Walker’s budget repair bill clearly recognize the significance of the legislation. We are asking that its passage or failure to pass be guided by our constitutional and legal guidelines.