Shhh…Don’t tell your patient!

Doctors go to medical school for 7-8 years and then participate in a 3-5 year residency. Why? Well, I thought they were accumulating knowledge that they could share information and skills with their patients in order to meet their patients’ health care needs. Apparently the Bush administration thinks otherwise. On December 19, 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation that protects against the discrimination of health professionals who withhold care from their patients based on moral beliefs. The protection of doctors who refuse to perform procedures based on conscience is already protected by existing law, what is novel (and frightening) about the new is its wide-scope. Although the Department of Health and Human Services claims that the regulation “encourages providers to engage their patients early on in “full, open, and honest conversations” to disclose what services they do and do not provide,” the language of the law protects physicians who don’t discuss with their patients certain options to which they are morally opposed. This means I could walk into a doctors office, ask for my options and here options A, B, and C and never even know that option D, E, and F exist. I agree that doctors shouldn’t have to perform operations if they are morally opposed but should they be allowed to act like certain options don’t exist just because they don’t like them? Maybe If I stop talking about finals, they will just magically go away. Hmm…that would be nice.