Complaint Review: Al Lindley Oklahoma House Of Representatives

Items in House Bill 1964 Medical Micropigmentation includes rules that I believe are unreasonable and violate Oklahoma Constitution.

http://www2.lsb.state.ok.us/2001-02bills/sb/hb1964_sahb.rtf

1) First, this is tattooing, which is illegal in Oklahoma, unless you call it something else and give the doctors a cut of the money. Micropigmentation, commonly referred to as permanent makeup, is not considered a medical procedure in any other state. OK law defines micropigmentation and tattooing as insertion of pigment under the skin, but states micropigmentation will not be construded as tattooing. 63-1-1451 and 21?841
Does this mean that we are being ordered to lie to the consumers that this process is not tattooing? This process is exactly tattooing.

2) Second, Giving exclusive control of a given field (micropigmentation) to a particular group (physicians) seems to fit the definition of monopoly, which is against the constitution. Housebill 1964 310:234-7-1
Medical Micropigmentation shall only be performed in a physician's office. Section II-32: Perpetuities - Monopolies - Primogeniture - Entailments.

Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free government, and shall never be allowed, nor shall the law of primogeniture or entailments ever be in force in this State.

3) Third, The physicians are in position to demand whatever percentage of the fee they desire, which prevents me from enjoyment of the gains of my own industry. Section II-2: Inherent rights.

All persons have the inherent right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of the gains of their own
industry.

The physician whose office I do micropigmentation in demands 50% of the procedure fee. I buy my own supplies and do my own advertising: business phone line, yellow pages ad, radio, etc. I gave him a detailed statement of my expenses which averaged around $1,000.00 per month. Some months, not only have I not profitted, I have been in negative numbers. He gets thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery procedures from my clients and my advertising. This is why the physicains want this in their offices -- because it brings in the type of client that spends money on cosmetic services and gets the physician's name out more for advertising purposes.

Body piercers put holes through tongues, which is more bloody and carries higher risk of infection, but they do not care about that and do not want that in their office because those clients are not in the age and income bracket targeted by their services. Tattooing is only skin deep and the permanent makeup is not even permanent. Sure there are some bad permanent makeup jobs out there (and some regulation is needed of course) but there are bad cosmetic surgery jobs too. The botched plastic surgeries are a bigger problem than bad permanent makeup that can be removed and fades off anyway. The individual must carefully chose who does the work. The worst permanent makeup job in my city is done by a physician.

I have looked around for other offices to work out of, but uless the physician gets big benefits for little effort, they are not interested. Some permanent makeup artists managed to find a doctor that took as little as 20%, but not many of them will do that. So, there is a lot of resentment among the certified micropigmentologists relating to who gets how much money. Many Oklahoma residents can't afford or are unwilling to pay the extra high prices for permanent makeup (that is not permanent) in doctors offices and go to the next state where rates are reasonable.

As a registered nurse, I am trusted to do much more invasive procedures without a doctor beside me. Many occupations operate their own business with only a medical director: home health, hospice, hand therapists, laser hair removal, facial salons, etc. It would be a nice compromise to just require a medical director.

I can spend hours working with a client and the physician breezes through to grab half the money. This is not right. They remind me of a bunch of thugs. It is not like these are his clients that he referred to me, these are my clients that I bring in because state law says I have to do this in a physician's office.

Renee
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
U.S.A.