Oh, this is not new at all, from the standpoint of healthcare professionals declining to provide these letters. From the standpoint of the healthcare provider, why should I do this and incur possible liability if the patient goes off and kills their spouse? The provider would probably then get sued on the basis that they should not have signed off on the handgun authorization, and if they had not done so, the spouse would still be alive. So from a provider standpoint, I have little to gain and potentially a lot to lose by doing this.
This may be a Kaiser political decision from the perspective of not getting involved in firearms issues, or this may be a Kaiser liability decision as noted above. In the Seattle area, for example, the largest healthcare systems in town (UW, Swedish, Providence, Group Health and Virginia Mason) will not sign off on medical marijuana authorizations or death with dignity authorizations, despite state law permitting it. The parent corporation has decreed that the employed providers cannot do so due to the political sensitivities around these issues. From a liability perspective, many of these same corporations no longer allow family practitioners to do deliveries, and all deliveries are sent to the obstetrics department. It boils down to the vicarious liability of the corporation for the acts of the providers.
