Obama to undo "conscience" rules for health providers

[GenMarshall]

I'm supprised MobBoss has not placed his US$0.02 in.

 

[CCRunner]

If there's another doctor that is able to preform the operation that isn't opposed to it morally, then why can't the first one (that didn't want to do it) sit out? As long as abortion is legal, someone should be able to get one I guess.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Mother of Mercy!!!

Now Obama is going to expect our health care workers to go against their moral values?! What's next forcing down vegitarianianism down people's throughts?!

Only covers abortion and contriception.

In praising the Bush administration last fall, Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, said that in recent years “we have seen a variety of efforts to force Catholic and other health care providers to perform or refer for abortions and sterilizations.”

cover contraceptives and requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims. It could also allow drugstore employees to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, critics of the regulation have said.

 

[luiz]

It's a question of whether the patients needs come first. I think they do. And if someone's beliefs prevent them from doing what they're paid to do, they should be fired.

What if we're talking about the owner of the pharmacy? Should he be forced to sell stuff he doesn't agree with? I say no.
Are all stablishments forced to sell everything in their field? That's BS. If there is only one pharmacy in town and it refuses to sell item X, than if you feel strongly about it open a pharmacy that does sell that item yourself.

 

[luiz]

I think everyone is overshooting this. The entire thing was enabled to deprive women of emergency birth control and in some cases, birth control period.

Deprive women of birth control... pfff. I'm guessing 99% or more of the places would keep on selling birth control, forced or not. I don't see how it's the government's job to force a commercial stablishment to sell stuff it doesn't want to. Other places can and will sell it as long as there's a market for it.

 

[emzie]

Deprive women of birth control... pfff. I'm guessing 99% or more of the places would keep on selling birth control, forced or not. I don't see how it's the government's job to force a commercial stablishment to sell stuff it doesn't want to. Other places can and will sell it as long as there's a market for it.

Pharmacists are licensed by the State, not the guy owner of the establishment.

 

[luiz]

Pharmacists are licensed by the State, not the guy owner of the establishment.

The owner of the stablishment may well be the pharmacist... that's common in small towns.

Of course I am OK with the owner firing an employee that refuses to sell something. That seems what Mise was arguing. But the problem here is forcing the owner to sell stuff he does not want in his stablishment.

 

[emzie]

The owner of the stablishment may well be the pharmacist... that's common in small towns.

Of course I am OK with the owner firing an employee that refuses to sell something. That seems what Mise was arguing. But the problem here is forcing the owner to sell stuff he does not want in his stablishment.

When you're licensed by the State, you're being licensed to provide a service to the population, not a license to do business as you please. If you don't like it, you're in the wrong industry.

 

[Irish Caesar]

Go ask the filibustering Republicans if only early laws are good laws.....

seriously, some of the environment protection stuff simply took a very long time to investigate, so it is no wonder that Clinton didn't do it much earlier. And 'last minute' stuff in environmental protection has a proud tradition going back to Teddy Roosevelt, after all!

I'm not implying early laws are any good, just saying that if they're set to take effect after the next Administration takes over, the idea that they will be overturned right away is almost a given.

Of course, the whole "last minute" stuff is just an effect of the re-election problem we have in this country...

 

[luiz]

When you're licensed by the State, you're being licensed to provide a service to the population, not a license to do business as you please. If you don't like it, you're in the wrong industry.

Don't be ridiculous. A license means you are allowed to perform said service (ie, you can perform it safely), not that you're forced to perform it.

As an engineer I am licensed by the state to project apartment buildings up to a certain height (I am not a civil engineer). That doesn't mean that I have to make such projects unless I want to. Being licensed by the state is not the same as being a slave, you know.

 

[Formaldehyde]

In praising the Bush administration last fall, Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, said that in recent years “we have seen a variety of efforts to force Catholic and other health care providers to perform or refer for abortions and sterilizations.”

Bwahaha. How exactly does one force doctors to give advice to their patents which they happen to morally disagree, much less perform abortions?

Ron Paul would get a real kick out of this 'issue'.

 

[emzie]

Don't be ridiculous. A license means you are allowed to perform said service (ie, you can perform it safely), not that you're forced to perform it.

A license means you're authorized to preform a service... and the authority comes from the state. The state says to get our permission, you must follow rules: no handing out opiates to kids for Halloween, patient privacy, and provide access of medications to people that have a prescription for them. The pharmacist is not the patient's doctor and has no right to interfere with that relationship.

 

[luiz]

A license means you're authorized to preform a service... and the authority comes from the state. The state says to get our permission, you must follow rules: no handing out opiates to kids for Halloween, patient privacy, and provide access of medications to people that have a prescription for them. The pharmacist is not the patient's doctor and has no right to interfere with that relationship.

Please. So a pharmacy is forced to have all sorts of medications? So I can expect to walk into a pharmacy in a 200 people town in Montana and demand a sophisticated prescription drug for a tropical disease?

Why can't the pharmacist decide what he wants to sell (as long as it isn't illegal)? If I want to open a pharmacy that only sells flu medication I can't? That's ridiculous.

Restaurants also have state licenses. Should vegetarian restaurant owners be forced to sell meat? Kids need meat! Your argument sucks. People can decide what they want to sell in their stores, it is called freedom. If you don't like their selection go somewhere else, or open your own business. Don't try to force them to sell things they don't want.

 

[Gustave5436]

They agreed to it when they applied for the license. They're perfectly free to violate the terms of that license if they wish, and the government is similarly free to revoke it.

 

[mrt144]

Please. So a pharmacy is forced to have all sorts of medications? So I can expect to walk into a pharmacy in a 200 people town in Montana and demand a sophisticated prescription drug for a tropical disease?

Why can't the pharmacist decide what he wants to sell (as long as it isn't illegal)? If I want to open a pharmacy that only sells flu medication I can't? That's ridiculous.

Restaurants also have state licenses. Should vegetarian restaurant owners be forced to sell meat? Kids need meat! Your argument sucks. People can decide what they want to sell in their stores, it is called freedom. If you don't like their selection go somewhere else, or open your own business. Don't try to force them to sell things they don't want.

You have a misconception of how it works luiz.

You have one licensed medical professional writing a prescription for a patient based on their diagnosis and patients treatment goals.
The patient takes the prescription to another licensed medical professional who fulfills the prescription.

Now heres the thing; you are claiming that a pharmacy should have the right to carry whatever medications they want. That is not what we are discussing at all here. We are discussing an individual employee refusing to dispense medication on moral grounds, even though it is in stock, it has been prescribed, and it does not pose a health risk to the patient. The precise problem is that the ability to refuse to dispense birth control and that being protected by law.

Everything would be fine if birth control was over the counter. The reason it isn't is two fold. 1. There are health risks with taking birth control. 2. There are attempts by many conservatives to make birth control hard to access out of moral consideration.

So if there isn't going to be a free market for birth control one should not be protected in refusing to dispense it for personal reasons.

 

[GoodGame]

Source



But, as I've argued elsewhere, I think this is a loser issue for them (Repub party) in the culture wars. If you think through the implications of this, it would've been very dangerous to allow. Do you really want doctors and pharmacists to become agents of morality? Its not just contraceptives etc... but do you want to be denied access to, say, anti-depressants because the only pharmacists in your area is a scientologist? What if I'm just morally opposed to passing out ritalin? etc... etc....

At any rate, another brick in the wall is undone.

That's a funny example---a scientologist pharmacist. I'd view it as a free market issue. One supplier might decide not to carry a particular remedy, but that would just make it more lucrative for another supplier to provide it.

Definitely if a professional is in a secular position, I would want the government to have them provide services, but if I have an other than professional reason for providing private practice services, shouldn't I have the right to refuse to perform them? I don't think that is actually the issue, since most hospitals are public, and probably secular, so I'd applaud Obama preserving that aspect.

 

[Formaldehyde]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm

From 2004:

The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.

In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.

Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision in September that would block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if they make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for abortions.

"We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it's really birth control that they're after also," says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

"The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, 'We're not going to fill that prescription for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing," she said.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/2007/040607MorningAfter.html

The NYCLU filed two similar complaints in August 2006, one of them against the same Rite Aid pharmacist after a similar incident with another customer. A companion complaint was filed against two additional pharmacists at a CVS in Saratoga Springs. Each of the three cases was filed on behalf of a prescribing Planned Parenthood provider who had prescribed EC, also known as the "morning after pill" or "Plan B," to a woman who was his or her patient. When those women went to their local pharmacies to fill the prescriptions, the pharmacists filled the initial prescriptions but refused to recognize the refills that the prescribing providers had authorized. The pharmacists refused to honor the prescription refills not because of medical or religious principles but simply because they objected to the idea that a woman might need EC more than once.

"That this pharmacist refused to fulfill a refill for a second time in one year shows that she has a serious problem in fulfilling her professional obligations," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "This pharmacist obstructed a patient's access to medication based on her own uninformed and biased opinions about that patient's sexual activity."

"Writing EC prescriptions with refills is the standard of care," said Dr. Marc Heller, medical director of Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson, a licensed physician and board certified obstetrician and gynecologist.

Because women often need EC on evenings and weekends, when doctors' offices and clinics are closed, providers give women advance prescriptions so that they will be able to take the drug within the necessary timeframe (when taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex, EC is nearly 90% effective in reducing the risk for unintended pregnancy). Major medical associations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Women's Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend that health care providers offer EC prescriptions during routine medical visits in order to provide patients with advance access.

 

[renohol]

Yep, Bush is right, modern medicine, basically anything practiced since 1800 is un Christian and praying and blood letting should be the law of the land!

 

[.Shane.]

That's a funny example---a scientologist pharmacist. I'd view it as a free market issue. One supplier might decide not to carry a particular remedy, but that would just make it more lucrative for another supplier to provide it.

The problem is when you have limited options due to where you live or the time you have on hand.

Thanks @ Forma... for the links to examples of how bad this can be.

That said, for all parties interested, this will be the subject on tomorrow's "Talk of the Nation" on NPR.