“We should never ask doctors and other health care providers to turn a blind eye to the risks posed by guns in the wrong hands.”
“We should never ask doctors and other health care providers to turn a blind eye to the risks posed by guns in the wrong hands.”
One of the few things Obamacare will allow Doctors to be paid for.
This story sounds like the KGB in the USSR. Put people in authoritative positions to implicate people they don’t like and let the Government jail them. Obama is on the slippery slope to dictatorship! Maybe he is there.
Alas, GD, you are only too close to right.
So I go to the doctor with a black eye because I REALLY did run into a door. The CDC studies have concluded that black eyes indicate a violent person.
Do I now fail a background check but am never told why?
Or the CDC studies determine that someone who wants to own a gun that just looks like a full auto weapon even though it fires the same round at the same rate of fire as a “normal” semi-auto must have violent tendancies, do I go on “The List”? (You know there’s going to be one that won’t be periodically purged.)
What have some teachers and school districts done with “zero tolerance”? Kids have been suspended for bringing a GI Joe “gun” to school.
The Bidens and Boxers won’t be happy till the only people that can legally have guns are their bodyguards.
This is why when your doctor (or anyone else who really doesn’t need to know) asks you if you have a gun, you say “No”.
I see this as a back-door attempt to force physicians to betray the doctor – patient confidence that everyone expects. Consider if Obamacare is taken to its logical conclusion of the “universal” single payer providing physicians with their only general source of income. A physician who fails to flag a patient who owns firearms to the “authorities” would open himself to sanctions, loss of certification, loss of livelihood or prosecution.
Obama aside (and we should be so lucky), this is truly a touchy area. Health-care providers are supposed to know something about their patients. If a patient seems potentially suicidal or dangerous, it’s appropriate for the provider to ask relevant questions. That may include asking if there are means to do something dangerous and trying to establish how sincere the dangerous thinking may be.
There’s also a place for asking if a child’s home is safe — “How does your dog get along with your son? Do the siblings interact safely? Do you keep weapons secured?” I think the issue came up when some providers went beyond the appropriate brief and into lectures — about firearms, car seats, sugar, etc. The line between concerned providers and nanny-bullies can be fuzzy.
Good for him. He’s urging an expansion of the definition of mandatory reporting. Health care providers are already required to report to police threats of suicide or of domestic violence, but they have been forbidden to contact authority with mere suspicions about whether or not someone is unstable and armed, unless they make a specific verbal threat.