Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Utah : Just Say "NO!"


This is not a post on abortion.  Let's not even go there.  This is a post on who gets to practice medicine.

So Utah passed a law -- signed by their governor after how many years of medical school? -- that mandates doctors to give general anesthesia to women having abortions after 20 weeks of gestation.  Legislators sometimes unwittingly attempt to practice medicine and pass laws that interfere with the doctor patient relationship, but this is the first time I've heard of legislation that demands a procedure that endangers a patient's life.  The theory is that the fetus might feel pain and that general anesthesia given to the mother might alleviate any pain felt by the fetus.  I'm not sure there is any basis for that-- at one time mothers were routinely given general anesthesia and I believe the babies still cried upon arrival into the world (~alas, I was one of those babies born during the era of giving anesthesia to the moms, but I can't say I remember much).  Babies are no longer born with the routine use of general anesthesia for the mother in childbirth because it's dangerous.  You can read about the Utah law here.


So doctors in Utah, how does this work?  Do you unnecessarily endanger the life of a mother for no valid medical reason, not to mention jacking up the cost of procedure, because a legislative body says you must?  Or do you refuse and risk sanctions?  Or do abortions for woman who are more than 20 weeks pregnant just stop?

So if law makers can mandate risky procedures and the unnecessary administration of powerful medications, regardless of patient need, then where does it stop?  Can they mandate that all patients brought to psychiatry ERs  by the police must be injected with anti-psychotics, regardless of whether they are indicated?  Can they mandate that everyone who has had a suicide attempt must take Prozac for life?  Where does it stop?  

Utah, what are your doctors thinking?  Why aren't they screaming their heads off?  Congratulations, your governor is now your doctor.

1 comment:

Joel Hassman, MD said...

I think Ayn Rand wrote it well in "Atlas Shrugged"

“I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

Note that last sentence, about it being less safe to depend on a health care professional who does NOT care about intrusions and policies written by non clinicians.

What is the adage again, something about silence is death?

Oh, and how about those physicians in New York State who have to use e-scribe prescriptions alone or risks fines, or , worse?

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/860961

Obamacare and managed care unleashed, think about it, all you docs out there who did nothing to fight this. Yes, you get the representation you deserve...

You know, people tell me to be the mensch, to be polite and respectful, with a bunch of cretins also called politicians, who live by two credos, "popular, easy, and convenient", and, "do as I say, not as I do!"

Good luck with that, this is now a street fight, Shrink Rap docs, and just remember this, about 50% of the voting public are seriously entertaining either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to represent this country as our next President.

Just say "No", hmmm, how did that go for the drug wars promoted by Reagan and his followers? Deeds, not words, but you know that, right...