Posted on 11/22/2004 11:55:48 AM PST by Born Conservative
The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) is warning all who will listen that “Big Brother will be soon snooping around your medicine cabinet!”
The Arizona-based association has come out strongly against the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act. Already passed by the House, it is working its way through the Senate.
“Do you want the government to have a record of every prescription you get?” asks the association in its campaign of flyers and e-mails reaching out to physicians and their patients around the country.
“Every painkiller? Every anti-depressant? Every sleeping pill? And then to pass that information along to law enforcement to prosecute you and your doctor if they don’t like what they find?”
AAPS is arguing that while masquerading as a law enforcement tool to help control the illegal use of painkillers, the national bill would “cast a net so wide that tens of millions of suffering patients & doctors will be snared in suspicion.”
Not limited to prescriptions for painkillers, AAPS adds, the bill would create a central database affecting tens of millions who are not even suspected of a crime -- and the information will be shared with state and local law enforcement.
“Prosecutors and law enforcement already second-guess doctors and prosecute them for prescribing ‘too much’ or if they decide the patient doesn’t ‘deserve’ treatment,” a spokesperson for AAPS told NewsMax.
“Overzealous prosecutors have already frightened many doctors out of prescribing pain treatment for the almost 50 million patients who suffer from pain,” the spokesperson added. “We can’t let them do it to the rest of us as well.”
In its current campaign the organization highlights:
The National All Schedules Prescription Reporting Act allows government and law enforcement to monitor your prescriptions;
Treats tens of millions of patients as potential criminals;
Gives prosecutors & law enforcement power to decide who is “deserving” of medicines.
AAPS emphasizes that in its opinion the bill as presently worded would potentially target every prescription that involves any type of scheduled drug for anxiety, depression, insomnia, or pain – “making the suspect doctors’ scripts readily accessible to the police and potentially to employers, newspapers, and blackmailers.”
Kathryn Serkes, public affairs counsel for AAPS, pointed out that more than 48 million people who suffer chronic pain in the United States are "having difficulty finding doctors to treat them as a result of misguided drug policy, law enforcement, and overzealous prosecutions.
“The ‘war on drugs’ has turned into a war on doctors and the legal drugs they prescribe and the suffering patients who need the drugs to attempt anything approaching a normal life,” added Serkes.
Get treated for depression one time in your life and possibly lose your gun rights! Don't let this happen.
"the bill would create a central database affecting tens of millions who are not even suspected of a crime"
Too many databases with too much information. This is not good.
Nope. The government has already made it plain that it will gleefully share (or sell) such information to private industry...like insurance companies. When insurance companies discover that you're taking stuff like high blood pressure medication, insulin, or have received chemotherapy, good luck ever getting a new policy. Some insurers will even rescind homeowner's policies and credit agencies will reduce your credit rating if they think your health has taken a turn for the terminal.
If the Republicans ever have a majority in Congress -- this kind of bill will never get out of committee.
This is not good IMHO.
Nope. The government has already made it plain that it will gleefully share (or sell) such information to private industry...like insurance companies.
You stole my words. Imagine your auto insurance company raising rates because of the prescription drugs you take. Would they ever tell you the reason why rates were raised or why you were denied coverage ? To even think something like this could be passed is scary.
Virginia already passed SB 425, creating a pilot program to track prescriptions for Oxycontin and other painkillers. This make Pharmacists defacto law enforcement agents. But no one would ever use this "confidential" information to say affect the outcome of alocal election. Or destroy a radio talk show host.
Here it is introduced by the House to the Senate:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:2:./temp/~c108SEroCo::
National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2004 (Received in Senate from House)
HR 3015 RDS
108th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 3015
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
October 6, 2004
"If the Republicans ever have a majority in Congress -- this kind of bill will never get out of committee."
Sadly, I don't think the Republicans have the nads or will to stop it. Not without putting their feet to the fire.
and by this description, they could say any priscription fir the definition:
(2) The term `controlled substance' means a drug that is--
(A) included in schedule II, III, or IV of section 202(c) of the Controlled Substance Act; or
(B) identified by the State involved as a drug subject to the monitoring program of the State under this section.
Over here.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds as follows:
(7) A major portion of the use and misuse of schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances involves interstate and foreign commerce.
Ah, the hint of Constitutional flavoring to make blatantly unconstitutional legislation seem legal.
The two halves of the Redomopublicrat superparty are equally worthless at protecting our rights, I'm sorry to say.
In progress. Watch the Florida Supreme Court on this one.
It was introduced by a Republican from Kentucky, Ed Whitfield.
From his webpage:
The first Republican elected from Kentucky's First Congressional District since the Civil War, Whitfield is part of the new wave of citizen-legislators that has adopted historic changes...
Just throw in the word 'interstate'.
Michigan's and Texas' requirements don't justify it--that's just an observation.
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