Dear patients: I'm from the government, and I'm here to hurt you!

 Rep. John "kissing bandit" Trebilcock

"When I told Mr. Trebilcock that I smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from him, he replied that he had just kissed a girl that had been drinking and that is why he smelled like he had been drinking," the arresting officer wrote in the report." (Tulsa World 4-2-07)

It’s hard to imagine a bill worse than the one that killed Sen. Brian Bingman’s chances to succeed Glenn Coffee as senate leader. But the chatter (and laughter) is starting to build about SB 1133, a bill that rolls back the scope of practice for Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.

CRNA’s provide the bulk of pain management to rural Oklahomans. CRNA’s are supervised by doctors, and are primarily responsible for pain relief and anesthesia delivery in the 57 counties where no anesthesiologists practice. So is there a problem with CRNA’s? Patient advocates say no: in fact, they point to the fact that no CRNA’s are in trouble with their boards. They don’t want to practice medicine or expand their scope of practice the way optometrists and chiropractors have been doing for the past decade.

In fact, the medical community has been saying for years that the expansion of scope by untrained surgeons is the primary danger facing Oklahoma patients. But the optometric lobby successfully fended off repeated attempts by the docs to scale back optometric excess, and suddenly the defeated docs turned on the CRNA’s, who operate safely and legally within their scope. Contracting the ability of CRNA’s to perform what they are trained to do will only worsen the ability of rural Oklahomans to receive quality care quickly and efficiently, patient advocates say.

Sounds like Obama-care, right? So why run a bill that reduces health care? Why punish a law-abiding fully-trained medical provider when there is no problem? Why move a bill that was dead as Julius Caesar last session? Enter the leading suspect: the Oklahoma Hospital Association. You’ll remember them from their hi-jinks involving the Oklahoma Heart Hospital.

The OHA supported the Obama-Pelosi-Reid socialized medicine model, and they’ve worked tirelessly to kill physician-owned hospitals like the OHH South Campus, which was located primarily to serve lower-income and veteran families in southeast Oklahoma County. One capitol observer says she’s never seen the OHA do anything to help patients. “They’re the lapdog of the billion-dollar profits non-profits, and screwing rural patients, rural hospitals and maintaining the status quo of their infection-filled mediocre medical model is all they do.”

Most observers we’ve spoken with believe the bill, (which is in fact backed by anesthesiologists despite the fact that there are not enough anesthesiologists to deliver services to the rural areas they’ll double-cross) is primarily moving as a payback to the OHA. This story is one to watch. Rural docs and rural hospitals are hopping mad. They know there is no problem, but can’t quite figure out precisely why the house leadership is hell bent on delivering this for the anti-patient bureaucrats at the hospital association.

There’s one more aspect of the bill that is causing house leadership to lose some sleep at night: the author. Rep. John Trebilcock, the primary house author, is aggressively preaching for all to hear his version of the science of anesthesia. He’s not a doctor, but as primary author he is expected to be able to field key questions and provide answers to the serious aspects of this bill. As patient advocates slowly but surely awake to the realization this bill is actually alive, Rep. Trebilcock will be thrust into the spotlight. For his sake, let’s hope he handles the science of anesthesia better than he handled the science of alcohol intoxication.