hope and change

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/24/news/economy/doctors_ditching_medicare_patients/

great news for medicare patients

[RoadKingLarry]

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

i'm changed   my health plan is being discontinued  lots of angry folks at geico

[Angel Eyes]

Not a problem.  Doctors will be required by law to accept Medicare patients, as part of their service to the state.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

i am thrilled at that prospect

i honestly am less concerned for myself  but things that perceive as a threat to my kids well being,  and this qualifies, bring out the less civilized side of me.   i shudder to think how i would react should i feel they had suffered actual harm    think of the movie john q

[Jamisjockey]

Not a problem.  Doctors will be required by law to accept Medicare patients, as part of their service to the state.

Expectedly the next step, and probably a necessary one to complete the takeover. 

[Perd Hapley]

Not a problem.  Doctors will be required by law to accept Medicare patients, as part of their service to the state. 

Haven't pharmacists been fired for failing to provide abortion drugs, and hasn't this held up in court?  Same thing.

[MicroBalrog]

Haven't pharmacists been fired for failing to provide abortion drugs, and hasn't this held up in court?  Same thing.

Is not a pharmacy a private entity?

[Perd Hapley]

Usually.  I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[Nitrogen]

Haven't pharmacists been fired for failing to provide abortion drugs, and hasn't this held up in court?  Same thing.

At will employment.

[Perd Hapley]

I'm totally down with at-will employment.  But it seems that in both cases, the argument used is the idea that not providing a service constitutes a denial of service.

And to reiterate, baby-killing pharmacies have every right to fire whomever they please.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

and if the pharmacy had tried to fire a satanist the gov woulda been all oiver em

[MicroBalrog]

c&sd: Quite, people should be free to discriminate, no?

If I owned a place that provides morning-after pills, I would want to have employees actually sell the products.

A person who got hired at, say, a restaurant and then stated his religious beliefs prohibit him from handling, say, meat and serving it to customers (despite it being a meat-serving restaurant) would be instantly fired.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

If I owned a place that provides morning-after pills, I would want to have employees actually sell the products.


if you owned a place and were morally/spiritually opposed to a product should the gov be able to compel you to offer the product/service?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799075/pdf/bth06_2p035.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Kevz_9lsw


more good news

[MicroBalrog]

If I owned a place that provides morning-after pills, I would want to have employees actually sell the products.


if you owned a place and were morally/spiritually opposed to a product should the gov be able to compel you to offer the product/service?

No, but if I understand correctly, "fired" implies that the person was not the owner, but an employee.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.jillstanek.com/aclu-demands-catholic-hospital.html


http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1087150

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/catholic_nurse_forced_to_participate_in_abortion_lawsuit_filed/

[MicroBalrog]

Government money comes with strings, you know. Piper. tune.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

fail  see if you can figure why

[Perd Hapley]

I certainly didn't mean to start an argument about at-will employment.  I was trying to point out that, if pharmacies could fire their employees for not dispensing abortion pills, it is not hard to imagine a court ruling that doctors cannot refuse service for Medicare-related reasons.

On looking around, though, it looks like the courts have ruled in favor of the pharmacists, many of whom were actually pharmacy owners that would have been required by law to dispense abortifacients or be put out of business.

[Nitrogen]

I think it's just as silly to go into a business where you might have to do things you're morally against, as it is to get a job doing so.

You can't just walk up and buy a Walgreens pharmacy, the training alone to be a pharmacist is pretty intensive.

Why bother if you don't want to dispense certain pills?  It's a waste of your own money (and our money, since many people get govt grants to do it)

Any pharmacy owner who does this deserves to go out of business in my opinion.  I could see it leading to any one of the following one day:

"Oh, your kid needs Adderall?  I'm not dispensing that. It's terrible stuff, and he's just a brat.  ADHD is over-diagnosed and this drug is over perscribed. HE probably doesn't have it.  If you were a better mother, he'd behave." [This has actually happened to my girlfriend's kid with a pharmacist they had never seen before, standing in for their normal one.]

"Oh, you need Valtrex?  I'm not dispensing that.  If you weren't a slut, you wouldn't have herpes."
"Oh, you need Atripla?  I don't despense drugs to gays because Homosexuality is wrong."

Fistful:  I think it's a stretch to link this to refusing to treat medicare patients.  If a pharmacy or doctor takes federal money, perhaps, treating medicare patients can be a condition of that.  Otherwise, I don't see it happening

[BridgeRunner]

It can be hard to find a profession completely devoid of moral ambiguity.

[Nitrogen]

It can be hard to find a profession completely devoid of moral ambiguity.

Exactly.  That's why if you're a pharmacist, you dispense what the doctor writes, unless you have information (drug interactions, allergies, etc) that would make that dangerous for the patient.  Then you call the doctor and get something else.

I work in managed hosting.  One of my customers is a spammer.
I'm more than happy to take their money, and when they complain that an anti-spam RBL is blocking them, I laugh.  I'll talk to the anti spam people, and pass it on to the customer.  They'll stop spamming for a bit, then start up again, and get blocked almost instantaneously.

Now, I won't help them hide who they are (they wanted a set of netblocks in someone elses name, which I wouldn't give them) or help them evade the anti spammers, but I have no problem taking their money for something i'm morally opposed to.  I'll make sure their network is running properly, and that the servers they pay for are running properly, and that's it.

You sometimes have to deal with rotten people to make a living.  I'll treat these guys fairly, but not give them anything above and beyond like I would my other customers.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I think it's just as silly to go into a business where you might have to do things you're morally against, as it is to get a job doing so.

You can't just walk up and buy a Walgreens pharmacy, the training alone to be a pharmacist is pretty intensive.

Why bother if you don't want to dispense certain pills?  It's a waste of your own money (and our money, since many people get govt grants to do it)

Any pharmacy owner who does this deserves to go out of business in my opinion.  I could see it leading to any one of the following one day:

"Oh, your kid needs Adderall?  I'm not dispensing that. It's terrible stuff, and he's just a brat.  ADHD is over-diagnosed and this drug is over perscribed. HE probably doesn't have it.  If you were a better mother, he'd behave." [This has actually happened to my girlfriend's kid with a pharmacist they had never seen before, standing in for their normal one.]

"Oh, you need Valtrex?  I'm not dispensing that.  If you weren't a slut, you wouldn't have herpes."
"Oh, you need Atripla?  I don't despense drugs to gays because Homosexuality is wrong."

Fistful:  I think it's a stretch to link this to refusing to treat medicare patients.  If a pharmacy or doctor takes federal money, perhaps, treating medicare patients can be a condition of that.  Otherwise, I don't see it happening

so its only those freedoms that you agree with that are important?  and some of these folks chose careers before these drugs were available.  on a side note are condoms still illegal in ireland?

[BridgeRunner]

Exactly.  That's why if you're a pharmacist, you dispense what the doctor writes, unless you have information (drug interactions, allergies, etc) that would make that dangerous for the patient.  Then you call the doctor and get something else.

I don't disagree with you, but I know some people who are simply incapable of compartmentalizing in the way that you suggest.   If the guy I'm thinking of was a pharmacist, he would be unable to distinguish the pharmacology of the drug from the moral implications of the drug.  He would refuse to dispense a drug that would be dangerous for the patient's body or the patient's soul.

This is one of the things about a guy that gets on my nerves pretty regularly, but it is a real issue.

And yeah, the availability of drugs has changed a lot over the years.