Docs v. Glocks: government regulation of physician speech [View all]

[HuckleB]

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/docs-v-glocks/

"...

As finally passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Rick Scott, the 2011 Firearm Owners Privacy Act subjects physicians to disciplinary action for making “verbal or written inquiry” into a patient’s firearm ownership when the physician does not “in good faith believe” such inquiries are “relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety of others.” The Act included amendments to the Florida Patient’s Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, adding similar provisions. (The Act also applies to health care facilities, but here we will discuss only its effect on physicians and their patients.) Physicians may not enter any information regarding firearm ownership into the patient’s medical record if they know this information is not “relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others.” They may not “discriminate” against a patient “based solely on the patient’s Second Amendment right to own firearms or ammunition.” Finally, physicians must refrain from “unnecessarily harassing” a patient regarding firearm ownership during an examination.

Shortly after Gov. Scott signed the Act into law, several physicians filed suit in federal district court challenging its constitutionality (Wollschlaeger v. Governor of Florida). The controversy was dubbed “Docs v. Glocks,” a term widely adopted by the media. Similar legislation has been introduced in at least 12 other states.

The Act, the physicians said, was an unconstitutional infringement on their First Amendment right to freedom of speech and was unconstitutionally vague because they were not fairly put on notice as to what they were expected to do to comply with the Act. (We’ll mostly focus here on the First Amendment issues.)

...

loser to the SBM home, my concern about legislative bodies making medical judgments is reinforced by state laws promoting politically-favored messages not necessarily consistent with evidence-based medical practice. (I do not include the SOCT bans in this category. There the legislature’s judgment was medically sound.) As we’ve discussed a number of times on SBM, legislators sometimes wander far outside the boundaries of science in making decisions affecting healthcare: Legislative Alchemy, the 21st Century Cures Act, non-medical vaccination exemptions, and “Right to Try” statutes. Physician questioning about gun ownership is, in my view, based on a reasonable judgment that discussing it is, at least arguably, a medically sound preventive medicine practice. Yet, the court, in requiring “relevancy” to a specific patient’s medical care based on a “‘some particularized information about the individual patient” effectively overrules the physician’s judgment. The same is true of state laws requiring physicians to make scripted speeches containing medically irrelevant information. Perhaps we need a constitutional “right to science” to protect the public against scientifically unsound legislative decisions."


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When some Republican tries to talk about "smaller government," remind that individual that the GOP works to tell health care workers how to do their job, and it doesn't care about best practices when doing so. It's just pushing ideology via bad laws.