Bush Official: Doctor's Right to Withold Info Greater Than Patient's Right to Receive It

[babylonsister]

Bush Official: Doctor's Right to Withold Info Greater Than Patient's Right to Receive It

Posted by Cara Kulwicki, The Curvature at 2:07 PM on March 27, 2008.

The Bush Administration has already said that doctors should be able to deny medical care to women. Now they want to deny information, too.


Surprise, surprise: the Bush Administration thinks that Ob/Gyns should not only have the right to deny women basic medical care like abortion, emergency contraception or regular old birth control, but they should also be able to refuse to provide a referral to another doctor for these services.

Font Tag Last Friday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt sent a letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, with a copy to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Leavitt said he was concerned about an ethics committee statement from ACOG in November stating that doctors should either be prepared to perform "standard reproductive services" or else refer those patients to someone who will.

Leavitt's letter said he was even more concerned that the Ob/Gyn board had made adherence to that policy a requirement for certification.

Pro-life Ob/Gyns complained that that would require them to make abortion referrals, something they morally opposed. And in his letter, Leavitt said that could violate federal laws protecting health workers' conscience rights.

But here's the thing. Also shockingly, Leavitt is an idiot. Not only because he sent such an outrageous letter in response to such a practical guideline -- essentially stating that a person actually does have a right to medical care regardless of who their doctor prays to on Sunday -- but because the board in no way makes adherence to this commonsense guideline a requirement for certification. It should be a requirement, of course; I don't really know how the hell you could certify a doctor who refuses to provide his or her patients with basic information about services he or she doesn't like and expect an acceptable result. But the fact remains that it's not a requirement. And so Leavitt is not only an asshole who thinks doctors should be able to withhold information, he's also an asshole who doesn't bother to verify information before widely disseminating it.


more...

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/80612/#more

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Ignorance is strength." - Republicon homelander philosophy

[Supersedeas]

3. the reality in front of the medias powdered faces could not be more stark

[cynatnite]

2. Leavitt is more than an asshole, he's stupid. The idiot can't read right...

But Norman Gant, executive director of the certifying board, says HHS got it all wrong.

"They took two and two and came up with five," he said.

Gant, who didn't respond sooner because he was out of the office, backed up what ACOG spokesman Gregory Phillips said Tuesday, which is that the ethics committee opinion regarding referrals is not a binding portion of the college's ethics code, and therefore not a factor in the decision about board certification.

"We do not restrict access to our exams for anyone applying for initial certification, or maintenance of certification, based on whether they do or do not perform an abortion," Gant said. "We do not base this upon whether they do or do not refer patients to an abortion provider if they do not choose to do abortions."

Gant said he dictated a letter back to Leavitt to that effect Wednesday. He added that the board has long respected the fact that its members disagree on the abortion issue — more than a decade ago it removed abortion from the list of cases to be used in oral exams.

On the other hand, Gant, himself an Ob/Gyn, said he personally had no problem with the November ethics statement, particularly the idea that Ob/Gyns should be ethically bound to provide contraception.

Apparently the Bush administration doesn't agree.

In an interview Tuesday, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Don Wright said HHS would be relieved to find that the certifying board isn't using the ethics statement for certification decisions. As for the college, "We would still hope that they would revisit their position," Wright said.

HHS spokesman Kevin Schweers said the department would have no further comment until it receives the board's written response.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88650797&ft=1&f=1012&sc=emaf

This came from the link that alternet used in their article.

[Winterblues]

4. I am so sick of that misnomer "Pro-Life"

They are Anti-Abortion. If they were truly "Pro-Life" they would get as far away from the Republican Party as humanly possible. Republicans love guns, death penalties, war, tobacco, and many other things that are instruments of death and are about as far away from "Pro-Life as one could get.

[kimmylavin]

8. Not to nit-pick...

But I'd go with anti-choice.

Suggesting that they are anti-abortion means that the other side is pro-abortion.
Just as calling their side pro-life suggests the the other side is pro-death, or anti-life.

Neither side is actually FOR abortion itself (just the right to decide for oneself whether or not to have one), and both sides ultimately want to reduce the number of abortions that are needed.

Its just the methodology, the tactics, and the beliefs that are different.

But what it comes down to is choice.

[Winterblues]

9. It is a good nit pick and I agree whole heartedly

I will try and remember that..:thumbsup:

[The Stranger]

5. But to practice medicine, you have to have a license, a privilege -- not a right.

Revoke their fucking licenses.

[Johonny]

6. Let's put it this way

The president has had problems with his colon for years now. Is it morally right for his doctors to have done a scope, see a problem and then not tell him?

[Kurovski]

7. And they have the nerve to moan about "the nanny state."

Shitbags.

K&R.

[dembotoz]

10. If the doc has the right to screw up my life due to his religious convictions, do I have the right

to beat his damn brain in when I find out he f----d me