Writers

In alphabetical order:

Pat Conrad, MD


Pat Conrad is a full-time rural ER doc on the Florida Gulf Coast.  After serving as a carrier naval  flight officer, he graduated from the University of Florida College of Medicine, and the Tallahassee Family Medicine residency program.  His commentary has appeared in Medical Economics and at AuthenticMedicine.com .  Conrad’s work stresses individual freedom and autonomy as the crucial foundation for medical excellence, is wary of all collective solutions, and recognizes that the vast majority of poisonous snakebites are concurrent with alcohol consumption.

Douglas Farrago MD

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Douglas Farrago MD is board certified in the specialty of Family Practice.  He is the inventor of a product called the Knee Saver which is currently in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Knee Saver and its knock-offs are worn by many major league baseball catchers.  He is also the inventor of the CryoHelmet used by athletes for head injuries as well as migraine sufferers. Dr. Farrago is the author of five books, three of which are the top two most popular DPC books.

From 2001 – 2011,  Dr. Farrago was the editor and creator of the Placebo Journal which ran for 10 full years.  Described as the Mad Magazine for doctors, he and the Placebo Journal were featured in the Washington Post, US News and World Report, the AP, and the NY Times.

Ken Fisher, MD

Dr. Fisher graduated from Tufts University in 1962 majoring in chemical engineering, and with distinction from George Washington University School of Medicine in 1968 having been elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society in 1967. He was a resident, and then chief resident in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and a fellow in Kidney Diseases at Yale University, finishing training in 1974. He was employed at a number of teaching medical centers throughout his career. He has been an insulin-requiring diabetic since 1963. 

Dr. Fisher has been the program director for two internal medicine residencies and two nephrology fellowships and has published several scientific papers on nephrology along with many articles and a chapter regarding health policy. Dr. Fisher was also a consultant nephrologist in Kalamazoo, Michigan and the Medical Director for the Free Clinic in Kalamazoo from 2007 till its closing in 2010. He is the author of In Defiance of Death: Exposing the Real Costs of End-of-Life Care, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 2008 (amazon.com/author/kennethafishermd ), and The Ten Questions Walter Cronkite Would Have Asked About Health Care Reform, (2011) a free e-book available at: http://drkennethfisher.com/The10Questions.pdf and in 2016, Understanding Healthcare: A Historical Perspective available at: freedominhealthcare.org 

John Hayes, Jr., MD

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John spent years working primarily with family physicians and surgeons helping their pain patients with chiropractic, clinical nutrition and lifestyle coaching.  His work with the sickest lead not only to furthering his training but more importantly to the development of patient systems & tools to better help those suffering neuropathy & chronic pain. 

Frustrated with the changes in healthcare and concern about increasing physician demands in 2008 he published the EVVY nominated book “Living & Practicing by Design” and along with his wife Patti developed simplified EMR, practice business platforms and systems.

He still regularly writes for patients and physicians alike, stressing the role each of our lifestyles, skills and behaviors have not only on health and illness but most importantly our mandate as physicians to maintain control of medicine’s clinical and business decision making. 

Kenneth LeCroy, MD

Kenneth LeCroy, MD has been in private practice as a Family Physician since 1999. He was raised in the Philippines until the age of ten as a missionary kid and has since spent his years in Texas. He attended Texas A&M for undergraduate work and the cross-state rival University of Texas (San Antonio) for medical school. He met and married his wife in medical school and they have three wonderful children who have all recently rudely moved off to college, leaving his nest forlorn. His practice is full gamut cradle-to-grave family medicine for all comers. He treats all peoples including hormone support for transgenders and cares for all people equally, although ardent Philadelphia Eagles fans make him nervous. As an infrequent contributor of the Placebo Journal and an avid reader of the same, he is excited to have a larger audience to listen to his rantings against the healthcare evils of insurance, pharma, and government than his imaginary friend. 

Steven Mussey MD

Steven Mussey, M.D. is a physician in Internal Medicine, practicing in the Fredericksburg area for more than twenty years.  He grew up in Springfield, Virginia and earned a degree in Physics from The University of Virginia, Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his medical degree at The George Washington University and was inducted into the medical honor society AOA.  He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine.


He served in the Air Force for four years before entering into private practice.  He particularly enjoys geriatric medical care and working with complex patients. For almost a quarter-century, he has been practicing with one other Internist.  Both doctors enjoy practice in a small, but busy office, and plan on working into their 70s, as long as they can still find their way to the office.    Dr. Mussey is also an avid cartoonist and has a weekly cartoon in the local newspaper.  He also enjoys cartoon animation and has had several public service cartoons playing regularly on the television cable systems.

Natalie Newman, MD

Dr. Natalie Newman is a residency-trained, board-certified emergency physician who has been practicing for over 20 years.

She graduated from California State University in Sacramento, California with a degree in Biological Sciences. She then attended medical school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio on an Army scholarship. As a graduating senior, Dr. Newman was presented with the Marjorie M. and Henry F. Saunders award for her compassionate care of patients within the family structure. After her graduation, she was accepted into the Emergency Medicine Residency at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York. Upon her graduation, Dr. Newman entered active duty service with the U.S. Army. Her first assignment was at Womack Army Medical Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. During her stint in the Army, Dr. Newman was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina(formerly Yugoslavia) where she was Chief of the Emergency Department at Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia. She had the honor of serving under the command of Colonel Rhonda Cornum(now a retired brigadier general), a urologist, pilot and former prisoner-of-war during the Persian Gulf War. While in Bosnia, and as the only American female physician in the Balkans at that time, Dr. Newman was assigned as the official physician for Queen Noor of Jordan during a humanitarian visit to a local hospital in Bosnia. After her return home to the U.S., she was promoted to Major and completed the rest of her Army service at Fort Bragg.

Dr. Newman subsequently returned to her home state of California. She has worked in rural facilities, community hospitals and trauma centers. She has also served as a ship physician for a major cruise line and also provided physician services at the Coachella/Stagecoach Festival in Indio, California for three years. Dr. Newman participates in public speaking engagements discussing the value of education, of which she is passionate. She continues to practice clinically as a traveling physician.