Sanity returns to health care policy. The Barack Obama administration will repeal the much-criticized "provider conscience" regulations that have been used to discriminate against gays, persons with HIV/AIDS, and women seeking abortions.
The regulations, instituted in the last days of the Bush administration, strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to provide a medical service over religious beliefs.
Human rights groups say the regulations could impair LGBT patients’ access to care services if interpreted to permit providers to choose patients based upon sexual orientation, gender identity or family structure.
The regulations also threaten women’s access to comprehensive health care by permitting pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraception even when doing so significantly burdens the patient’s access, or to refuse to participate in an emergency abortion even when the woman’s health is at risk.
The regulations, which were rushed through days before Bush left office, override many state laws protecting patients’ access to medical services.
There have reports these regulations have been abused. CVS locations in Washington D.C. have been accused of limiting access to condoms and some pharmacists refuse to dispense birth control pills. Gay activists in Chicago have accused several Walgreens locations of refusing to sell condoms to gay men.
One of President Obama first official acts was to begin the reversal of Bush's much-criticized family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have "linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education." It's about time science and public health concerns replaced religious fundamentalism and right wing screeds in health care policy.
Some Background ...
Obama to Reverse Bush on HIV, Condoms, Abstinence [R20]
Thankfully, the Obama Administration has realized what a gross violation of the Hippocratic Oath the "provider conscience" regs were! I could not believe Bush & Co. actually thought it was acceptable for a health care provider to permit a patient to DIE because their "religious beliefs" prevented them from giving treatment.
NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum released a report last year showing that gays and lesbians were treated poorly by hospital and clinical staff, even refused treatment (a direct violation of NYS law), and generally made to suffer at a time when they, like all hospital patients, are most vulnerable. I guess it's OK to refuse to help a sick or injured human being if your religion allows that kind of behavior.
ALL health-care providers in New York State are expected, as a matter of professional conduct, to treat all persons who seek their care, regardless of the religious beliefs of the practitioner. Put another way, when I was in EMS, suppose I looked at a patient and decided I couldn't treat him because my religion said he was "abhorrent" or "Unacceptable". Suppose I turned away and left him to bleed to death on the pavement. That's called "criminally negligent homicide" and it was exactly what Bush was condoning with the "provider conscience" nonsense. I'm overjoyed that Obama has put a stop to this!
Posted by: Nathan James | 03 March 2009 at 08:29