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Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

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Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#31

Post by ledauphin »

If there's anyone left in the comment section now that this has been flagged and consigned to the outer darkness...

Please take a moment and imagine a world in which software developers were all forced to spend 4 weeks a year building drone missile AIs for Palantir so that the US can bomb weddings in Yemen.

Further imagine that you started your career before the US had drones, so the possibility that your skills would be required to bomb birthday parties had not occurred to you when you initially chose your current field.

Obviously not everyone here is in agreement about the moral status of various forms of medical services. That's fine - as it happens, apparently not everyone in the US is in agreement about the moral status of bombing weddings in Yemen either!!

But a failure to understand that – especially in a big tent society – sometimes people with certain skills don't want to put them to use in the way that other people want to see them put to use, is a truly remarkable failure of imagination for a message board filled with people of above-average brainpower.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#32

Post by lokar »

gfodor wrote: post #17

Certainly it's debatable if doctors should be able to deny treatments they think aren't harmful but they see as religiously offensive. But the root disagreement here is primarily about harm, and we already have agreed as a society that doctors have a duty to not knowingly harm their patients. If you can frame something as a civil rights issue, that can help resolve some conflicts but doesn't do much in terms of resol…

I don’t agree that it is up for debate. The profession has clear ethical standards, you know them when you begin training.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#33

Post by positron6000 »

ledauphin wrote: post #16
toyg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beliefs are that felons are unredeemable and undeserving of any care provision whatsoever. Hence, "just those specific services" becomes all health care. One should always imagine the worst case when writing good laws. Unfortunately, we all know this law is not meant to be good, it's meant to be a wedge.

this bill does not allow exclusion of medical care based on your beliefs about the patient, but based on your beliefs about the medical care in question. [It is deeply weird how uncurious the comments on this particular article are.]

you keep saying this, but if a doctor believes that a gay person is not a human being because of religion, this bill would allow them to prevent giving that person any kind of care.

"i have a persistent cough and need a check up."

"sorry, i'm going to deny you a routine check up based on my belief that homosexuality is a sin. providing this procedure to you would be tacit support of homosexuality."

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#34

Post by positron6000 »

ledauphin wrote: post #31

If there's anyone left in the comment section now that this has been flagged and consigned to the outer darkness... Please take a moment and imagine a world in which software developers were all forced to spend 4 weeks a year building drone missile AIs for Palantir so that the US can bomb weddings in Yemen. Further imagine that you started your career before the US had drones, so the possibility that your skills woul…

lmao jesus christ - "being gay or a minority and seeking medical care is the same as drone striking a wedding, actually." keep it classy, hn.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#35

Post by anonymouskimmer »

ledauphin wrote: post #27
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compelled service with compensation still exists: Jury duty, contractual relationships (e.g. military stop-loss policies). What this does is eliminate a particular contractual compulsion.

interesting you bring up jury duty and military service, both of which have longstanding religious conscience exemptions.

Only because it's the government imposing them, and the government (not private sector) is constitutionally forbidden from interfering with religious exercise.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#36

Post by ars »

positron6000 wrote: post #33
ledauphin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this bill does not allow exclusion of medical care based on your beliefs about the patient, but based on your beliefs about the medical care in question. [It is deeply weird how uncurious the comments on this particular article are.]

you keep saying this, but if a doctor believes that a gay person is not a human being because of religion, this bill would allow them to prevent giving that person any kind of care. "i have a persistent cough and need a check up." "sorry, i'm going to deny you a routine check up based on my belief that homosexuality is a sin. providing this procedure to you would be tacit support of homosexuality."

That's your personal false interpretation of the text.

It's not actually true though.

Argue about reality, not your personal boogeyman.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#37

Post by ars »

calgarymicro wrote: post #7
ars wrote: post #4

The title and article aren't quite telling you the truth. The bill allows providers to decline to provide specific services where those services are in opposition to their beliefs. It does not allow them to deny all health care, just those specific services they are opposed to. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

So a doctor could refuse to prescribe PrEP or treat STDs? Also, it does look like services could be denied to specific people based on gender identity or sexuality, per the article. > While the legislation says that health care providers can't use it to deny care based on a patient's race, color, religion, sex or national origin, attempts by Democratic lawmakers to extend those protections to gender identity and sexu…

> So a doctor could refuse to prescribe PrEP or treat STDs?

Only if the doctor felt that the treatment, not the illness, not the person, the treatment. Was against their moral beliefs.

The article lies and pretends it's about the person. This is not true.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#38

Post by ars »

hgsgm wrote: post #11
ars wrote: post #4

The title and article aren't quite telling you the truth. The bill allows providers to decline to provide specific services where those services are in opposition to their beliefs. It does not allow them to deny all health care, just those specific services they are opposed to. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

So like, if I believe that it's immoral to touch a gay person, and I am an EMT who encounters a bleeding gay person?

Nope. That will not work because the bill says services not people.

The doctor can prefuse to perform specific services, nothing in the bill permits then to refuse to treat specific people.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#39

Post by positron6000 »

ars wrote: post #36
positron6000 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you keep saying this, but if a doctor believes that a gay person is not a human being because of religion, this bill would allow them to prevent giving that person any kind of care. "i have a persistent cough and need a check up." "sorry, i'm going to deny you a routine check up based on my belief that homosexuality is a sin. providing this procedure to you would be tacit support of homosexuality."

That's your personal false interpretation of the text. It's not actually true though. Argue about reality, not your personal boogeyman.

it isn't a "personal boogeyman" because it's literally in the text of the bill. you seem intent on pretending that this is related solely to "procedures" which apply to everyone when that is plainly not what the bill states.

(g) “Health care service” means medical research, medical 98 procedures, or medical services, including, but not limited to, 99 testing; diagnosis; referral; dispensing or administering any 100 drug, medication, or device; psychological therapy or 101 counseling; research; therapy; recordmaking procedures; set up 102 or performance of a surgery or procedure; or any other care or 103 services performed or provided by any health care provider. 104 (h) “Participate” or “participation” means to pay for or 105 take part in any way in providing or facilitating any health 106 care service or any part of such service.

furthermore:

(5) IMMUNITY FROM LIABILITY.—A health care provider or 195 health care payor may not be held civilly liable solely for 196 declining to participate in or pay for a health care service on 197 the basis of a conscience-based objection.

meaning, a secretary in a doctor's office can prevent a gay person from making an appointment for any "procedure" at all because doing so would be facilitating a health care service that they personally object to.

here's the bill text: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1580/BillText/er/.... it's quite short, you should read it.

Re: Florida health care can now be denied based on moral, ethical, religious beliefs

#40

Post by toyg »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #13
toyg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beliefs are that felons are unredeemable and undeserving of any care provision whatsoever. Hence, "just those specific services" becomes all health care. One should always imagine the worst case when writing good laws. Unfortunately, we all know this law is not meant to be good, it's meant to be a wedge.

This analysis of "what's the worst that could happen" is insufficient as the appropriate test is "what's the worst that could happen and how often could it happen" Things that can go very wrong, but which in practice we may expect to be extremely rare are not necessarily large problems.

They are still problems. They can be somewhat neutered when they clearly go against the spirit of the law. Unfortunately, this is not the case here: since the spirit of the law is effectively to move decisive power from patient to doctor on grounds of personal and un-objective opinions, aberrations fit pretty nicely inside it.

Notice how amendments to protect sexual orientation were rejected; that is very much a "worst case" (and statistically significant) that could have been easily avoided, bringing no ill-effects, additional ambiguity or implementation costs. Still, the legislator explicitly decided that case will fit in the law.

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