Oh, I’m not in favor of the law, I was just commenting on how I’d feel about a pediatrician giving me gun safety advice. I wouldn’t be immediately offended or anything, I’d just tell him I don’t need it so don’t bother. If he kept pressing on then I’d be offended that someone I’m paying to do work for me won’t shut up and actually give my kid a medical exam. I would hope any pediatrician I’m forking over my hard earned money to can still do his job as a medical doctor without giving me as a parent a lecture.
If he lectured me on something I was genuinely ignorant about, then I wouldn’t tell him to mind his own business and I’d probably be grateful. I don’t see a harm/foul in trying to give the gun safety advice, but I don’t see it as a problem if I say “I’ve already got that covered–thanks.” Nothing wrong with offering, but I would have a problem if pediatricians as a rule made it a policy that they would not treat any patient whose parent refused to listen to their lectures.
I’ve also said before when it comes to pharmacists, having known my grandfather who was a pharmacist for decades, he never would have thought it appropriate to ever get into personal details of a customer’s life in that way and would never use his own personal convictions when it came to dispensing medicines–so I don’t think pharmacists should do that either.
All of these safety questions – about the storage of prescription medicines, about the car seat, about guns in the home, etc. – ARE asked by all the pediatricians at the medical group we take our child to, in a sense anyway. It’s on the developmenal checklist we have to fill out every time we take our child for a well-baby checkup. Right after the questions about how our child is eating, whether he is walking yet, etc. So the doctor doesn’t personally ask the questions but we give the answers anyway, in writing.
I suppose there’s nothing stopping us from refusing to answer the questions on the checklist that we thought were too personal. I don’t know if the doctor would ask verbally then.
Having just had a conversation with my eldest about helmet usage I can only say hooray. You can be my ped any day of the year. A ped should be free to bring up any subject they damned well please with their patients. My ped tells morons who don’t vaccinate to go elsewhere. Should the state force her to treat them?
Well, I’m not infringing on anyone’s speech because 1) I’m not the government, 2) I don’t support this law in Florida, 3) I don’t live or vote in Florida.
I’ve never said I thought preventative advice is bad or unnecessary, I’ve just said if a doctor started giving me as a parent advice on how to properly store household chemicals or firearms I would politely tell them I had that handled myself and was not in need of the advice. Your example about bike helmets and smoking are of course different issues. I’d be fine with you giving my hypothetical-child advice on things like that, because a child may respect a non-parental authority figure more than a parent, kids being the beasts that they are. But I’m an adult and I would expect someone for whom I am the paying customer to respect my wishes to not receive certain lectures if I inform them I do not need said lecture. If you do not want my money because of that, I’m fairly certain I will not have difficulty finding another doctor.
I do think that if every physician made it a rule that patients had to listen to lectures or not receive medical care, that could create a health care crisis and I would be in favor laws preventing that. So while I wouldn’t favor a law that criminalized speech of physicians, I might support a law which made it illegal for a physician to refuse to treat someone just because that person refused to listen to their lectures. I imagine perhaps the licensing authorities on state levels could achieve that with administrative rules instead of legislation, though.
I know a guy who weighs 350 lbs. He’s told me on a few occasions he’s had to tell his doctor “I don’t need your advice on how to live my life.” This guy is 100% aware that his obesity is destroying his health, his mobility, and will almost certainly put him in an early grave. He’s told his doctor he doesn’t care and that he has no interest in losing weight. As a friend I wish the guy would lose weight, and I wish he’d listen to his doctor. However I think he should still be able to receive treatment even if he isn’t interested in listening to his doctor’s advice, he still needs routine medical care and diagnosis. While I can understand for some of his issues his doctor might say “if you do not do y, I can’t help you with x” there is no reason that doctor should totally sever the patient-doctor relationship when there are still other services he will need from some physician.
I do. A doctor should not deny his services during his stated business hours for any reason other than patient harssment, threat, or delusion. And in fact, by virtue of medical training, doctors are indeed obligated more than the rest of us.
I’m not saying I would support the law. Just that my heart isn’t bleeding for doctors.
And Merijeek demonstartes he’s an insulting asshole. What a surprise.
No, genius, because doctors are consistently some of the most useless human beings I manage to meet. In between trying to prescribe things utterly irrelevant drugs, offering shoddy work and requiring uneccessary tests, and isdiagnosing ridiculously common complaints, I’ve pretty much had it with the medical profession. I eventually broke down and performed goddamn minor surgery on myself because they were too full of themselves to bother. The last useful doctor I encountered was somewhere in the late Bush 1 or early Clinton administration.
Perhaps there’s more to the story than the pediatrician asking the question, the parent refusing to answer, and the doctor then refusing service. I’m supposing there was an argument, the patient was belligerent, the doctor finally had enough. I know many gun owners, and they are not the same thing as gun nuts. But I also know gun nuts, and they are always spoiling for a fight.
When a patient says to me, “I’m not an idiot,” I won’t say I immediately assume that he’s an idiot, but it raises the odds considerably.
There’s a lot to know about safety. I learned something new every day when I was on my pediatrics rotations–I didn’t realize that walkers were dangerous and counterproductive, I never thought about how standard hot water temperature can be dangerous for kids, and I wasn’t aware that experts recommend no television viewing whatsoever for kids under 2. How would anyone know such things if someone didn’t tell them? I suppose you can read such things for yourself, but I’m guessing that the type of person who gets pissy when the doctor asks about basic home safety issues isn’t going to read a book on the subject. We all pick things up here and there, but do you really want your child’s safety to depend on shit you picked up here and there?
A resident told me about a patient a while back whose father kept a loaded gun in his nightstand. When asked what he did to keep his son away from it, the father answered “I told him that if I caught him in that drawer, I’d whoop him.” I’m willing to bet that man doesn’t think he’s an idiot.
I don’t give a shit about anybody’s guns. I think if you want a closet full of assault rifles and a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, that’s your right as an American. (I might roll my eyes at you, but that’s my right as an American.) The main thing I want is for your kid not to shoot himself or someone else. The secondary thing that I want is to not get my balls sued off when your kid shoots himself or someone else and my records show that I didn’t counsel you on gun safety. Even if 95% of people have the sense to take basic precautions, that means 5% don’t, and I see them too, and it’s amazing just how much that 5% looks like the other 95%. The main difference is that the 5% are far more likely to think they know everything they need to know.
That is true as a general proposition, but in the specific area of regulating what doctors may tell their patients, courts have been pretty restrictive about what states and the feds can do. See, e.g., Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 884 (1992); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 200 (1991); Florida Bar v. Went For It, Inc., 515 U.S. 618, 634 (1995) (this one’s about lawyers); Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis v. California Bd. of Psychology, 228 F.3d 1043 (9th Cir. 2000).
In the Eleventh Circuit? Hard to say what they’d do. But I’d say the odds of this surviving First Amendment challenge are not better than 70%, even if they are not worse than 30%.
No. That is the Court’s holding. But the reasoning is what is relevant here. The Court applies standard First Amendment analysis to the regulation of psychologist speech, a standard with an arguably quite different result when applied to the law discussed in the OP.
Decent medical care. I really just needed someone to do the job using professional materials so I didn’t have to carve open my own flesh where I have a hard time seeing using blunter self-sterilized instruments than I’d prefer. Of course, they offered to do it… but one issue at a time and only if I paid for expensive, irrelevant tests
I don’t pretend I’m unbiased in this. I watch with gleeful rejoicing whenever the medical profession is humiliated in any way. But I’ve been none too pleased with doctors trying to grab total control of your genetic information, lock down competition so there’re fewer doctors with an expanding and aging population. There’s a deep-seated arrogance in the profession, despite doctors not exactly being at the forefront of medical innovation since the time of Imhotep.
I personally believe all those things are out of line for one reason. You are only there to deal with the situation at hand. When I am sick, I do not want to be harassed, and I do avoid the doctors who do this.
I can see part of the prescription one being relevant–when you are prescribing the medicine. Giving directions on what to do with the medicine you are prescribing is in your purview. While asking about other medications is okay when making sure there is no reaction to what you prescribe, it is not within your purview to tell me what to do with them.
I only recognize a doctor’s right to butt into my life in an emergency. My safety and health are not your concern outside of the limited issue for which I am paying you. It’s noble you want to help, but that’s not what I’m paying you for. Do that on your own time, not on the job.
For example, if I came in with, say, diabetes, it would be relevant to talk to me about my weight, as reducing that that can help treat that situation. If I come in for strep throat, it’s entirely inappropriate. In fact, I reported a doctor who did just that. She did it to enough people that the main doctor fired her for bad bedside manner.
As for this law–it would be entirely based on whether the doctor was refusing to provide services due to his questions. If not, of course you have a right to ask questions I consider to be rude. If so, sorry. I believe in a right to healthcare. It is an essential service, and you should not be able to just kick people out like a regular business owner. And if the only way to insure you won’t do that is to prevent you from asking the question, then so be it. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can tell people about my medical records, either.
As for the other crap that’s in this thread: no, pharmacists should not be able to refuse prescriptions, and, no, I do not own a gun nor really ever have had an interest in owning one. You’ll note I believe in a right to healthcare–I’m not a conservative in any real sense.
You know, I should read those stickies. I stopped caring at the start of the cunt debacle and have not kept up. Knowing that I was angry enough about this that I would want to swear at any one who dared to defend this stupid law was why I brought it here, to the Pit. Live and learn. Well, whatever expletive I can say to him then. Fill it in.
Martin this law is not about doctors kicking patients out or somehow forcing patients to listen to a lecture. (If only I could!) It is about criminalizing even asking about guns and gun safety.
As far as kicking patients out of a practice goes … I do know a few who kick out those who will not vaccinate their kids. I do not. I have kicked out patients who have been verbally abusive of my staff (me they can be abusive to, although they usually take out whatever angst they have on my staff and not me, it drives staff crazy that to me the biggest abusive loons are all sweetness and light), those who have been multiple repeat no-shows, long time non-payers who won’t cooperate in developing a payment plan, any payment plan, and pretty much that’s it. I know of internists who have kicked out patients for failure to comply with recommendations - like not getting clotting levels checked while on anticoagulants, and for forging scripts. And those who are suing them. I have never known of someone being kicked out for refusing to answer a question or for a political belief or practice. And even when I do kick people out I cannot abandon them. I need to give at least 30 days notice, and be available for medical emergencies until they have found another doctor. To do otherwise leaves me exposed for malpractice.
Yes, I am sure that the Mom who was kicked out was not just refusing to answer, she was abusing the staff in front of other patient families about it. No doubt in my mind whatsoever. Kicking her out for a polite failure to answer a question would actually already be disallowed under the patient abandonment guidelines I think.
As to continuing a line of questioning that has been made clear is unwelcome … well sometimes I need to, but as part of preventative care doing so is ultimately counterproductive and at least I know that. Ultimately preventative care is sales and a hard sell usually is not the best sell. I can sometimes get those who already “know” what they need to know engaged in a discussion of what they know and sometimes each of us can learn something in the process.
