PPC Homepage

Healthcare Backlash: The First of Many Doctors “Going Galt”?

by | 11:45 am, April 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

Okay, perhaps “Going Galt” is a bit of an exaggeration in this case, seeing as how the doctor in question hasn’t closed up shop, but I suspect that this won’t be an isolated event given that it’s much easier and less personally and professionally disruptive than the full version:

Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care

“I’m not turning anybody away — that would be unethical,” Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. “But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it.”

The sign reads: “If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.”

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) is predictably not amused:

The outspoken Grayson described Cassell’s sign as “ridiculous.”

“I’m disgusted,” he said. “Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.’ If this is the face of the right wing in America, it’s the face of cruelty. … Why don’t they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?”

You stay classy, Rep. Grayson!

The article notes that doctors are not permitted to refuse care to patients based on the usual menu of personal factors (race, gender, ethnicity, etc.), but that political affiliation or views are not included in that list. As the cancer of Obamacare spreads throughout the existing healthcare industry, however, look for small instances of resistance to the plan to change that fact. It would not surprise me if the odious, grandstanding Grayson is the first to propose a bill forcing doctors to treat patients regardless of political affiliation, as well.

Frets one medical “ethicist”:

The notice on Cassell’s office door could cause some patients to question his judgment or fret about the care they might receive if they don’t share his political views, Allen said. He said doctors are wise to avoid public expressions that can affect the physician-patient relationship.

Allowing doctors to express their political views and act on them in the realm of free association in their practice is dangerous to the doctor-patient relationship and potentially corrosive to the quality of care they provide to patients with whom they disagree, but forcing doctors to shut up about their political views and care for patients who support the nationalization of their industry and their profession – to bottle up that frustration and resentment – won’t have any deleterious effects on the care of those (and other) patients?

I’m not suggesting here that it is acceptable for doctors to deny care in emergency situations based on the patient’s political views (for example, refusing to treat the victims of a car crash they happen upon solely because the car in question bore an Obama sticker on its bumper). Nor do I believe even the most stridently anti-statist doctor would do so, absent some significant character flaw independent of their political views. I do however support their right of free association in who they accept as their voluntary patients based on their patient’s chosen political views – especially if the exercise of this right involves (as the case above) the informed voluntary choice of the patients themselves. Patients are already afforded this right to choose — no one will coerce them into involuntarily accepting care from a physician who they know to hold political opinions with which they disagree. Instead, they may choose to find a like-minded physician elsewhere, to set aside their political differences while receiving care, or (in extremis) to go without care if the disagreement in question is insurmountable. Patients have that choice, why shouldn’t doctors?

And if someday under Obamacare doctors are coerced into associating with patients with whom they have strong political differences, why shouldn’t patients likewise be forced to accept care from a doctor whose politics they find abhorrent?

Share
Category: Health Reform, Healthcare, Liberty, Philosophy
Tags: > > > > > >

Comments

  1.   Donald Johnson
      April 2nd, 2010 @ 4:00 pm

    Doctors, dentists, chiropractors and alternative care providers have been lobbying and rallying their patients to their political points of view as long as there have been doctors and politicians.

    We have hundreds of costly state mandates that insurers cover various procedures because the providers asked their patients to support laws that would enrich them. Mandates increase premiums by about 50% in Colorado.

    The only thing new is that one Florida doc is making headlines with his protest, and the media are having fun with the story.

    For years, physicians have refused to take Medicaid patients because they lose money treating them. Now they’re refusing to take new Medicare patients. And soon they’ll refuse to take any patients. the New England Journal of Medicine recently published a survey that shows that a huge percentage of docs said they will take early retirement if ObamaCare passes.

    In effect, like the doc in Florida, a lot of physicians are going on strike.

Praise for PPC From Our Lefty "Fan"

  • "Zany-ass bombast-entertainment...Hackneyed weirdo communist pseudo-nostalgia" --Alan Franklin, ProgressNow

Featured Posts




  • When a young girl gets close to the truth about a long-forgotten mystery, a harmless adventure becomes a threat to the future of the independent commercial settlements on Mars.

  • Advertise Here!

    info-at-peoplespresscollective-dot-org

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Meta




  • Buy a Tea Party Poster!