The Tennessee Medical Licensing Board was
threatened to the point where it finally decided to
delete a policy opposing coronavirus misinformation from its website.
This followed a powerful conservative lawmaker threatening them.
I'll give you those details in just a second.
But the policy unanimously adopted by the board of Medical Examiners in September,
establishes that doctors who spread demonstrably untrue information about
COVID-19 vaccines could have their licenses suspended or potentially revoked.
>> It seems reasonable.
>> That is the most rational policy imaginable.
You want to ensure that during a global pandemic where hundreds of thousands of
Americans have already died, you prevent the spread of misinformation.
But not so fast, there are quite a few of right wingers in this country who would
love to continue disseminating false information and wanna protect that.
So members voted 7 to 3 by the way to delete, but not rescind the policy.
The policy unanimously adopted by the board of Medical Examiners in September,
establishes that doctors who spread demonstrably untrue information about
COVID-19 vaccines could have their licenses suspended or potentially revoked.
Now, members voted 7 to 3 to delete, but not rescind the policy.
I just wanna really emphasize that.
>> [LAUGH] >> What does that mean?
>> I've been wondering.
>> So the board claims, yeah, I mean we deleted it from the website but
it doesn't mean the policy just goes away.
We didn't rescind it, the policy still exists except the individual who
threatened them over that policy says, no,
deleting it from the website means that it has been rescinded.
I'll get back to that in just a second.
Now, who's the person who threatened them.
Well, it is a Conservative lawmaker who apparently loves
the idea of people getting sick and dying from COVID.
All right, so here's what the threat is.
So, there was a lawmaker who said basically if you keep this on the books,
what we'll do is we'll just completely dissolve,
we'll completely dissolve this board, it will no longer exist.
>> During a public health crisis?
>> During a public health crisis.
That's what the threat was, okay?
And so here's what happened.
Jennifer Putnam,
who's actually an attorney who works with the board let them know.
Hey, Representative Ragan is saying and yes, his last name is Reagan.
Representative Ragan has done this in the past and
he's followed through on it and we need to be super careful because he will,
in fact, dissolved this board if we keep this policy in place.
In fact, here's her statement.
Chairman Ragan also made clear he has no qualms about moving
forward with dissolving the BME, that's the medical board and
reconstituting it with new members.
He has in fact done this with another state agency, so
it is not a hollow threat.
And by the way, he said the joint government operations
committee has the authority to very seriously recommend
disillusion, and he sets the agenda for the committee.
So he's he says that he'll follow through with the threat, but claims that he can't
unilaterally do it, t he can do it with the help of his committee.
>> Mm-hm. >> So basically,
they got rid of a policy that's meant to protect people because they
got threatened.
>> But they say they didn't.
>> So I don't understand why they seem
to be confused about what makes something a rule or not.
If it is literally just having it on a web page, then I don't think that that
necessarily is going to be able to be used to take away their license.
Do they not have an actual like printed outset of their rules, guidelines,
regulations, anything like that?
It's just whatever happens to be on the website at any given moment.
If the website goes down, are there just no rules?
It's chaos all of a sudden.
And then of course, look, that's the minor point.
The bigger point is that the side that says that we've politicized COVID,
is always exerting as much political influence as they can over this process.
Not to guarantee better public health outcomes in terms of lower case counts and
deaths and those sorts of things, but just making sure that the people that they've
convinced that this isn't something you need to take seriously.
You don't need to get vaccinated, you can just take whatever medicine is just
hanging around, that those people's feelings aren't hurt and
that is at the end of the day what this is about.
The doctors wanna be able to continue to spread misinformation that they can't
demonstrate with actual studies.
And we're not allowed to have higher standards for doctors administering care
to people who might be getting sick with COVID that we do random does online,
giving the same misinformation on YouTube channels.
>> I don't know what you're talking about, John.
We have the best health care in America, and
that health care has helped to not prevent the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of Americans during the Coronavirus pandemic.
>> I don't know if you're allowed to say that,
because I don't know if it's really a rule.
Can you spread misinformation that's the monster venture, can you not?
Cuz you just did.
>> Right, so as I've mentioned, right?
So the board says, no, no, no, we did not rescind the policy,
we just deleted it from the website.
Representative John Ragan, the one who threatened the board says,
no, it's absolutely rescinded.
So the board was urged to vote specifically on whether or
not they wanna rescind the policy and the board is like, no,
no, no, we're not gonna do that because they're terrified.
They're terrified of this lawmaker who has threatened them and threatened their jobs.
That's how politics works in this country.
You've got one side that's vicious and will stop at nothing to destroy you and
destroy your career, and then you've got the other side that refuses to fight.
And by the way, I don't know what the political makeup of this medical board is,
but I guarantee you they're terrified of losing their jobs,
which is why they refused to even vote on whether or
not they're gonna rescind the policy in the first place.
But like guys, they want the misinformation out there
because the misinformation helps them create this into
the COVID sort of centered culture war that we're in.
Not only the culture war, but
it helps them to push people to be a lot more relaxed about this pandemic.
That's still killing a lot of people.
And it's just frustrating cause these are the people who are like no censorship.
We believe in freedom, except when it comes to messaging that we disagree with.
Yeah, it's just cancel culture.
And again as I've always said, that is why we have to fight back against those sorts
of constructs because they're just used for partisan ends