Posted on 07/29/2014 2:15:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On July 25 the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit "eliminated the injunction" against the enforcement of Florida's "gun gag" law, which restricts doctors from asking patients if they own a firearm unless asking is necessary to a patient's treatment.
According to Law360.com, the 11th Circuit ruled that barring doctors from asking about firearms "doesn't violate the First Amendment."
Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) signed the NRA-backed "gun gag" legislation in 2011. Suit was brought against the State of Florida over the law by "the Florida chapters of the American Academies of Pediatrics and American College of Physicians along with a number of other groups and the anti-gun community."(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
If this is what it appears to be, it would be overturned by the scotus. The first amendment protects doctors too. They should be able to ask, but you are not required to answer.
Good.I wouldn’t answer any questions like that anyway.
You’ve never been to a V.A. clinic or hospital? Yes, you are required to answer.
I don’t see the issue here. States have been prohibiting certain questions for years. Think of employment. There are a list of about 10 or 15 questions that an employer can’t ask in an interview.
I guess I would side with letting anyone ask any question in any context as long as they are not forced to ask the question and the person being asked is not forced or coerced into answering it.
I thought the accusation is that if people refuse to answer, the doc refuses treatment until they do.
Agreed.
My doctor has the right to ask me if I own guns, and I have the right to tell him it’s none of his business. I also have the right to find another doctor.
What CANNOT be allowed to happen, though, is for the answer to have any effect on my health insurance premiums or my medical treatment.
Completely unnecessary -
If your doctor asks you such questions, inform him that it’s none of his business and that you will be seeing another doctor.
Problem solved. Without government.
If my doctor ever asked me, I would tell him that it was none of his damned business and find a new doctor.
It’s certain factions within the government that are seeking this information from doctors.
It isn’t “free speech” to ask this question when the government is requiring them to ask it (and it is none of their damn business anymore than “do you own a car”, “what type”, “how long”).
Centers For Disease Control considers gunshot wounds a “disease” that needs to be controlled.
I will simply tell them no.
Best Answer: NYGDB Doc!
You can ficure out what that stands for I’m sure.
They ask the kids. The ones that we can’t know the records from.
In this case, it was always coercive, and done with truly evil intent.
As background, the radical leftist American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is devoted to “the leftist agenda”, not children, issued a directive to its members that they should ask both parents and children about guns in the home, so that they could add them to the children’s medical records; where due to HIPAA, they could then be accessed by many government agencies.
The idea was insidious, that if the state Child Protective Agency investigated the parents, their ownership of guns would be “one factor” in determining if their children should be taken away. Likewise, if they wanted to adopt, if they had guns, they could be turned down as adoptive parents.
The coercion was included, that if parents *refused* to tell their pediatrician about their gun ownership, the pediatrician could refuse them services, even if the next nearest pediatrician was 75 or 100 miles away.
As soon as the state of Florida found out about the scheme from upset parents, they passed a law forbidding such inquiries. And not wanting their scheme thwarted, the AAP filed suit, alleging that the doctor’s first amendment rights were violated by not being able to do this.
Initially, not knowing any better, I would hope, a federal judge found in favor of the AAP, and overturned the law, but the state appealed. Now a 3 judge panel has reinstated the law. The AAP will undoubtedly appeal to the entire circuit court en banc.
As an aside, the AAPs behavior on this and other circumstances, led a former AAP president to set up a conservative pediatric association, the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), whose interests are solely about the medical care of children, not radical leftist politics.
Bottom line is that, if you have children whose pediatrician belongs to the AAP, you need a new pediatrician, because the AAP is one of the most radical leftist medical associations out there.
Few years back I’d agree with you and say this was unconstitutional.
However Obamacare has turned doctors into agents of the government. So the government gets to dictate what gets asked and what doesn’t.
If my doctor ever asked me,...”
I have a great internist. Met him and his wife while they were shooting in the adjacent lanes at one of our local ranges. He said he asks people if they own a gun and if they say no, he asks them why not and offers to give them the name and phone number to a local range if they are interested in learning how to protect themselves.
He does not accept any insurance and said he can’t add any new patients for at least six months as he has a very, very busy practice.
Not necessarily. There are all sorts of limits to our free speech that have been upheld by SCOTUS. For example, you can't ask someone in a job interview if they're married, or if they have kids, or what their religion is. The same logic would apply here... there's no legitimate reason for the doctor to know whether or not a patient owns a gun unless it would affect their treatment (e.g., a patient who is suicidal). In fact, I think there's less of a reason for the doctor to ask about gun ownership than there is for an employer to know if a potential employee is married with kids, and SCOTUS has already upheld those free speech restrictions.
The fight here shouldn't be with doctors asking the question...it should be against the doctor ever being allowed to divulge the answers...along the same lines as "lawyer/client privilege".And the fight should be against doctors being required to ask such a question by the government.
However we are not obligated to speak the truth. Obama is proof.
I mean, if they’ve been upheld by the SCOTUS, why it MUST be Constitutional, eh?
Interesting my copy of said document contains no such exemptions; nor does it specify the SCOTUS to be the end all of what is/not Constitutional.
Here I was, all this time, thinking is was We the People that decided and had Inalienable Rights...yes, HEAVY /s
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