Doctors with moral objection could refuse services to patients under bill (MI) House panel passed
Source: Detroit Free Press
Doctors with moral objection could refuse services to patients under bill House panel passed
5:12 PM, December 12, 2012
By Kathleen Gray
Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau
LANSING On a straight party-line vote, the state House insurance committee voted today to approve a bill that would allow health care providers and facilities to refuse service based on a moral objection, religious reasons or matters of conscience.
The bill now moves to the full House, and if approved, would move to Gov. Rick Snyder for his signature.
The bill, which has passed the Senate, respects religious freedom, said the bills sponsor, Sen. John Moolenaar, R-Midland. But also allows for the best medical care.
-snip-
But opponents of the bill said it could have many unintended consequences, including denying health care for things such as birth control pills or to patients with AIDS, or denying services to people who contract diseases from certain behaviors.
Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20121212/NEWS06/121212033/Doctors-moral-objection-could-refuse-services-patients-under-bill-House-panel-passed?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
The GOPers in the state government of Michigan are on a real fucking tear during this lame duck session.
My thanks to all MI citizens who found other stuff to do more important than voting in 2010.
the beat goes on.
PSPS
(13,644 posts)Real doctors are dedicated to healing, not "punishing for GAWD."
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)not to provide certain kinds of care at the risk of being maligned in the press, in churches etc. Suddenly, everything becomes abortion. You prescribe Birth Control Pills or insert IUDs? Your name is plastered across the local newspaper as a "baby killer."In order to stop the negative publicity, you have to stop prescribing birth control and claim it is a matter of "conscience."
The Reich Wing wants women to get pregnant early and often because unwed mothers make great minimum wage slaves.
Judi Lynn
(160,682 posts)If they want to be fundie preachers, they have chosen the wrong profession.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Doctors and hospitals will become economic targets of the right wing---and availability of health care for gays,women,disabled, minorities will vanish.
msongs
(67,502 posts)Politicub
(12,165 posts)Sickening.
Elections have consequences. The GOP could not have won so many races had dems got off their collective asses across the country. And now we may be gerrymandered out of taking back the house.
We're all to blame. We all could have done more.
2012 is just around the corner.
jerseyjack
(1,361 posts)Publicize it - squawk about it before it goes to the main governing body.
benld74
(9,912 posts)I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
DreamGypsy
(2,252 posts)....(sic)
A few comments on the Hippocratic Oath here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html
Indeed, a growing number of physicians have come to feel that the Hippocratic Oath is inadequate to address the realities of a medical world that has witnessed huge scientific, economic, political, and social changes, a world of legalized abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and pestilences unheard of in Hippocrates' time. Some doctors have begun asking pointed questions regarding the oath's relevance: In an environment of increasing medical specialization, should physicians of such different stripes swear to a single oath? With governments and health-care organizations demanding patient information as never before, how can a doctor maintain a patient's privacy? Are physicians morally obligated to treat patients with such lethal new diseases as AIDS or the Ebola virus?
Other physicians are taking broader aim. Some claim that the principles enshrined in the oath never constituted a shared core of moral values, that the oath's pagan origins and moral cast make it antithetical to beliefs held by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Others note that the classical Oath makes no mention of such contemporary issues as the ethics of experimentation, team care, or a doctor's societal or legal responsibilities. (Most modern oaths, in fact, are penalty-free, with no threat to potential transgressors of loss of practice or even of face.)
With all this in mind, some doctors see oath-taking as little more than a pro-forma ritual with little value beyond that of upholding tradition. "The original oath is redolent of a covenant, a solemn and binding treaty," writes Dr. David Graham in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association (12/13/00). "By contrast, many modern oaths have a bland, generalized air of 'best wishes' about them, being near-meaningless formalities devoid of any influence on how medicine is truly practiced." Some physicians claim what they call the "Hypocritic Oath" should be radically modified or abandoned altogether.
Best wishes, patient. Here's your bill.
Luschnig
(32 posts)How does this proposed law in Michigan differ from the laws in 1930s Germany limiting health care access to Jews? Maybe Lansing, MI aspires to become the new Berlin.