On November 18, a federal judge has granted the ABR’s motion to dismiss for the lawsuit filed this February. Judge Jorge Alonso was unconvinced by the argument that the ABR has illegally tied its MOC product to its initial certification product, agreeing with the ABR that the two things are really two parts of the same thing (despite the fact that for lifetime certificate holders…they’re not):
Ultimately ABR sells only one product: certification of radiologists as having ‘acquired the requisite standard of knowledge, skill and understanding essential’ to the practice of medicine in their particular specialty or subspecialty. This was once a one-stage process, and it is now a multi-stage process, but it does not follow that the certification process consists of separate products; now as ever, there is only one product.
You can read a quick summary from Radiology Business.
Ultimately, there is a wide gulf between the things that are unethical or morally repugnant and those that are unequivocally illegal such that a court will reliably provide a ruling that coordinates with common sense or layperson expectations.
With how dysfunctional our national legislative bodies have become, people have forgotten that the courts are supposed to be more of a last resort than a primary hope.
Across all critical issues, we can’t rely on appointed judges to make things right.
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