Feel Good Story: Doctors who gave Wisconsin anti-Walker protestors sick notes fined up to $4000

20 doctors were disciplined and 11 were fined for handing out fake sick note during the protests against Gov. Walker's bill to strip union bargaining rights from public employee unions in Wisconsin .

Madison - The state medical school disciplined 20 doctors and fined 11 of them up to $4,000 for handing out sick notes to demonstrators at last year's labor protests, newly released records show.

The records, requested by the Journal Sentinel last year under the state's open records law, show for the first time the extent of the discipline given to those doctors by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

In several cases, doctors in more senior positions within the school also had to step away from those roles for a period of four months over one year. All the doctors were warned that further actions could result in them being fired.

"In the future, you are expected to adhere to the appropriate standards of doctor/patient interaction," the letters sent to doctors in May and June of last year read.

The discipline records show that the physicians disciplined in most cases insisted they had acted correctly even when accepting the discipline, saying they believed they were helping public employees under stress rather than writing fake sick notes to allow demonstrators to skip work and keep protesting. Read more here...