It’s not a matter of law even. What is most important is the purpose of a doctor, the whole Hippocratic Oath thing and all that. Doctors choose who they are going to be giving care to, and no doctor who truly believes in the Oath is going to refuse emergency life-saving service to someone simply because they can’t pay.
True, but that’s between a doctor and a patient, not between government and the doctor.
As I said, the only reason this law would or should ever be changed is if resources became limited. Regardless of a doctor’s Hippocratic oath, he can’t treat everyone every time. Even today, a hospital will get overcrowded and doctors will have to make decisions as to who needs care the most.
If the hypothetical situation ever came up where a doctor had to choose between a cocaine OD and a child injured in a car accident, it would not violate his oath to minister to the child and leave the OD until he was done.
Interesting. You must be an incredibly astute person to be able to sum up my political designation from just once sentence! I wish I had the ability to seperate people into one category or another! It just makes life so much easier to sum up people so neatly, doesn’t it?
It’s funny . . . I always thought the Left was more concerned with imposing their “morals” upon others, but that’s besides the point.
For the record, I am neither Right or Left. I find different issues on which I agree with both sides.
If resources become limited, doctors will do what they always do in emergency situations: determine who is at most risk at the moment, and concentrate their care on the one on most dire need. It’s called “triage.”
Moral judements have no place in it, nor should they.
Roches said,
My son was hospitalized for 1.5 days, received no drugs (just a couple blood tests) and the bill was $9K. For the record.
I completley disagree with the OP, even if we ignore the moral issue you have to look at how this could ever be enforced. I’ll offer a scenario:
A young woman is brought into casualty with what appears to be a heroin overdose, before any treatment can be administered you have to establish whether she is OD’ing or if it is something else. After the toxology report comes back you discover she has indeed OD’d on heroin (she will be long dead at this point and the cost of finding out whether she is on heroin would have far exceded the cost of a single adrenalin shot) but unbeknown to the doctor she was administered the injection against her will by her boyfriend. Its a bit of a quandry no? The subsequent lawsuit runs into millions.
Now I know this is not likely but what you are asking is impossible, not to mention extremley unfair to ask a doctor to decide whether someone should live or not. The world isn’t a black and white place, it would be a lot easier and cheaper to treat first and ask questions later, if you ask questions first most patients would be dead before you managed to get to the treatment part. I admit (to my shame) that I have OD’d four times on heroin and crack, everytime treatment was adminstered on the spot and required no hospital stay (except once and it was for 2hrs) now I have become a productive member of society (I Hope!) I can’t help but disagree wholeheartedley with your scheme. Civilisation is built on compassion, and people deserve a second chance in life even if they have made mistakes IMHO.
[Nitpick]
Narcan (naloxone) 0.4-2mg titrate to response.
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Thanks, I never actually knew what that stuff was!