I just had to include this as a blog post...
Hal Scherz is just one of the many willing to get down and invest his own capital in growing our grass roots efforts to influence health reform. This is one of those things our organizations just cannot do as well. Your interest,contributions and participation are essential.
As Dr Scherz states:
""I know how much everyone enjoys opening my TNTC emails (LOL) and I'm sure that you must have wondered where I disappeared to. I was down most of this week with what I'm convinced was H1N1, although the ER wouldn't test me. (A taste of what we have to look forward to under Obamacare). Now that I'm strong enough to sit up, I can start bothering everyone again. If you had any emails bounce back, please resend them. My box was filled up because I didn't clean it out for 5 days. If you sent me an email in the last few days, I promise that I will read it over the next 48 hours.
There are 2 things that I wanted to address tonight. As I have indicated to everyone, Docs 4 Patient Care will be an embedded sponsor of the Mike Gallagher show.
This is more like a partnership, because he has a strong, personal reason for wanting the doctor-patient relationship to be protected. Please begin to go to Mike's web site (http://www.mikeonline.com/) beginning on Monday and you will see Docs 4 Patient Care featured prominently. The exciting news regarding this, is that Mike is doing a 3 hour healthcare show this Thursday, Oct 29, and his co-host will be Hal Scherz. Yes, you didn't misread this. We will be discussing every aspect of the healthcare debate and we will try to have a guest or 2 to help to clarify the issues. His show is predominantly an audience participation show, so it would be a great opportunity for everyone to try to call in and to say what you would like to his national audience. If you are not familiar with his show, find out online which station his show is broadcast on in your area. It might even be a good idea to put this show on in your office waiting room and see if the hospitals will put this through into the doctors' lounges.
The second other important issue that I wanted to cover has to do fundraising. Please don't stop reading- this is different than usual.
I have received feedback from people that I have known professionally for over 20 years who I have reached out to in different parts of the country. When they heard about what we were putting together and that my practice was so committed, that we were putting up $40,000 in seed money, it was a "no brainer" for them. However, they are trying to convince people that they work with in their communities to dig into their pockets and write big checks. They are a bit reluctant because they don't know us, and they aren't sure where their money is going.
These are fair questions and concerns. First, let me assure everyone, that as a not for profit 527 political corporation, everything that we collect and spend has to be above board and transparent. If any member has any questions, they can contact our treasurer and board member, Joanne Thurston, who is a CPA.
Another question was whether I or any of the other officers have received any compensation. I wish. The truth is that not only do we not receive compensation, but we continue to put up our own money without asking for reimbursement for business related items- business cards, signs, etc. We have been to Washington twice already, and use our own money for these trips. And except for the past 4 days that I have taken off because of illness, I have averaged 5 hours of work daily for the past 5 months without any compensation. Anyone who sees what time the majority of my emails are timed can attest to this.
As to where does the money go? Well, there were start up expenses which we won't go into. But there are ongoing costs every month- mostly web site maintenance and our PR team. There are intermittent costs such as legal, marketing, other consultants.
However, we are now ready for prime time. We either move to the next level or pack up our toys and go home. What this means is that we spend a large amount of money getting out our message on a national platform and on a regular basis. This will open up more doors to us than we can possibly even imagine at this point. We need to hire an executive director, who will help to take the burden off of me. There are still many large initiatives that we need to launch, such as putting together the thousands of newsletter recipients who are not doctors and whose energy and enthusiasm is being wasted. We need to get these people working for us and contributing to our cause. The same for the allied health care professionals. There are thousands of doctors that we could get into Docs 4 Patient Care. We are poised for explosive growth. We need help to make this happen. We would like to at some point hire our own lobbyists and this will be very expensive. And there is so much more than this.
So this is where the money is going. Most of you getting this email don't know me at all, although there are ways to check on people today that didn't exist in the past. However, I think that it is worth taking a flier on this one. Do you want to write a big check in hopes that your money will actually work for you, or do you want to pretend that everything will be ok and hope that if you play nice and don't make too much noise, that you'll be left alone? This is almost too insulting to even ask this question.
Enough tonight. But those who want to contribute but just aren't sure, just do it! ""
All the best
Hal
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