Discouraging
Dec. 19th, 2008 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleUgh, this is a completely horrible development:
Health providers' 'conscience' rule to take effect:
The last-minute Bush administration declaration lets doctors, clinics, receptionists and others refuse to give care they find morally objectionable.
This is especially bad for people in small towns. In several small towns around California, the only hospitals are run by Seventh-Day Adventists, who havesome truly far-out beliefs let's say "a history of curious beliefs" about medical care. I've heard of non-religious doctors getting frozen out, and the nearest non-Adventist care is more than fifty miles away.
The Web is curiously silent about the Adventists' moves, and I can't find much commentary on it beyond allegations of them discouraging abortion. But this eleventh-hour ruling is very disturbing given the domination of rural California health care by a religious group that seems likely to make immediate use of this law.
[Edit: It might be that I should be taking some of the things I hear with a grain of salt, having had limited direct contact with this group.]
Health providers' 'conscience' rule to take effect:
The last-minute Bush administration declaration lets doctors, clinics, receptionists and others refuse to give care they find morally objectionable.
This is especially bad for people in small towns. In several small towns around California, the only hospitals are run by Seventh-Day Adventists, who have
The Web is curiously silent about the Adventists' moves, and I can't find much commentary on it beyond allegations of them discouraging abortion. But this eleventh-hour ruling is very disturbing given the domination of rural California health care by a religious group that seems likely to make immediate use of this law.
[Edit: It might be that I should be taking some of the things I hear with a grain of salt, having had limited direct contact with this group.]
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Re: Hospital "takeovers?"
Date: 2008-12-20 08:52 pm (UTC)Anyway, I know of doctors in Ukiah that have been effectively driven out by the Adventist center - never overtly, it's just that their practice becomes impossible to sustain. I am also hearing about people who say they have been denied sufficient pain management medication because "if they put their faith in God they won't need it". Hysteria? Maybe. It didn't happen to me personally, so I can't really know. But if Adventists are scanning the web and jumping on everyone that criticizes them, maybe there's a reason their Web presence looks so controlled?
The Ukiah center has been here for twenty years, it's not as if the domination of medical care by this group has happened overnight. But they did effectively take over - not by "force", but there was enough concern at the time that there was an antitrust investigation, in which the Adventist hospital prevailed.
The fact is that the Adventists have in the past espoused many ideas that are at odds with mainstream medicine, including rejection of pharmaceuticals, and while much of their lifestyle advice is very good and effective, I have very little trust in religious organizations when it comes to separating their religious beliefs from the treatment of patients in a secular context. Particularly following the Bush ruling, when there is no other option for care, and when they openly call me a "sinner". You can imagine why I might be alarmed enough by this to take my medical needs to Kaiser, fifty miles away.