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My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

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Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#141

Post by lobster45 »

techdmn wrote: post #43
jrs235 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, what about the fact that if the woman knew the Privacy Policy was 3000 pages and in a binder (which she claimed to be aware of) and knowingly accepts a statement she strongly believes to be untrue? Is this enough to invalidate the "contract" because it is blatantly known that full disclosure and meeting of the minds has not been met? This also comes to mind during mortgages and car loans. Often the clos…

I the first time I closed on a house, realizing ten minutes in that either I was going to be signing contracts without reading them, or everyone was going to be sitting around watching me read for three hours. There's a lot of pressure in a situation like that, even though I try never to sign anything without reading it.

When we closed our house we not only read through the entire stack of mortgage papers, we had a several hour session where the escrow representative went line by line and explained everything to us. It is always good to understand what you are signing, especially a 30 year mortgage contract. However many of the statements we signed very worded in a way that a lawyer can interpret it in any way so the liability falls on us!

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#143

Post by wccrawford »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #103
wccrawford wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to accept the changes, if any. The lack of a place for them to sign is proof that they intended for it to be signed as-is, or not at all. Contracts aren't valid unless both parties have accepted them. The doctor's office can't accept a contract they haven't read yet, and any changes to a contract make it a new contract.

If they go ahead and treat him and their policy is only to treat patients who've signed it that's likely to be acceptance by action.

That's true. But either way, they didn't get permission to use the data for marketing. And that's what that slip is really about.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#144

Post by derleth »

rfugger wrote: post #120

I recently had a similar experience at my dentist's office. I was asked to sign a waiver of liability, presumably for insurance purposes. It asked me to state that I had been informed of the risks of the procedure (tooth removal), including a long list of possible bad outcomes. I asked the dentist about this, and she said not to worry, most of those couldn't happen here. So I asked her to please strike the ones that…

That dentist is an ass.

Whatever else a medical professional of that type's job is, it is public-facing. That has implications up and down their practice, but one of the most basic is that they are expected to treat patients with dignity and respect.

I grew up around the medical world, and someone who acted like her would not have a good reputation among her colleagues, and it wouldn't matter if she was a DDS, MD, APRN, RN, or what.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#145

Post by Jun8 »

tzs wrote: post #126
Jun8 wrote: post #86

What's really the problem with this situation is that it's really hard to point a finger to a single culprit in the system thereby pointing to a way to solve the problem. That's why it's a wicked problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem ) * The doctors cannot be blamed because they want to protect themselves (e.g. see the insane amounts of insurance required to practice medicine in the US to guard agains…

> What's really the problem with this situation is that it's really hard to point a finger to a single culprit in the system thereby pointing to a way to solve the problem. Couldn't this have been solved by simply having a copy of the privacy policy available in the sign-in area for the patient to read?

I don't think so. As others have stated, perusing dense legal documents while people are waiting for you just doesn't work. Even if we remove the time constraint, many people wouldn't be able to understand the legalese.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#146

Post by Jun8 »

roc wrote: post #118
jrs235 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly agree. Except, the politicians ARE to blame! We need spined, "sensical" statesmen leading our government to workable solutions, not self-fish, egotistical wimps working towards "getting the meanest/loudest 'animal(s)' off our backs and getting re-elected". Tort reform is where I would start if I was working towards a solution. Tort reform is often not done because 90% (pulled from the air based on recollection…

Tort reform hasn't materialized very many benefits in the States where it's been attempted. I'm afraid it's a starting point at best [1]. And desiring simple laws that people can read and understand is like desiring simple code that people can read and understand. Sure, there's lots of code out there written with bad practices, acquiring years of cruft and in need of some refactoring, but there's also massive amounts…

This is an excellent point! "Make things as simple as possible but not any simpler" The solution is not try to keep the current situation and try to simplify (or translate into simple English) the legal contracts, which is pretty much impossible, but change, to the extent possible, the need for complexity.

"Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it" In the OP, rms is taking the pragmatist approach and is willing to suffer the complexity, i.e. reading the huge binder if it could've been found. The solution is to reduce the need for doctors to hide behind such high legal walls.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#147

Post by nradov »

techdmn wrote: post #43
jrs235 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, what about the fact that if the woman knew the Privacy Policy was 3000 pages and in a binder (which she claimed to be aware of) and knowingly accepts a statement she strongly believes to be untrue? Is this enough to invalidate the "contract" because it is blatantly known that full disclosure and meeting of the minds has not been met? This also comes to mind during mortgages and car loans. Often the clos…

I the first time I closed on a house, realizing ten minutes in that either I was going to be signing contracts without reading them, or everyone was going to be sitting around watching me read for three hours. There's a lot of pressure in a situation like that, even though I try never to sign anything without reading it.

By all means read the documents that are actually contracts.

But those are only a few pages. The rest of the documents you have to sign when closing a real estate purchase are mostly boilerplate disclosures about mold, asbestos, flood zones, penalties for fraud, etc ad nauseum. Anything that's actually important in the disclosures you'll already know about if you did your pre-purchase investigation properly. So there's no point in wasting time reading those disclosures in detail during the closing.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#148

Post by slowpoke »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #97
Xylakant wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In germany for certain contracts (such as buying a house or creating a LLC) it's required that a notary reads them aloud for you. That's quite a bit of fun if the contract contains annotations that make it fill a binder. There are some loopholes though: The contract may refer to another document that the notary may read to his assistant, so not everybody has to go through the whole ordeal.

Seems like that could leave a nice side effect of shortening contracts.

In Germany, the stronghold of bureaucracy? You wish.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#149

Post by gioele »

shasta wrote: post #12

You should be careful just adding "not", because they can always claim they didn't notice you modified the agreement (I'm assuming no one on their staff signed or initialled your change).

The European custom is to ask the other party to sign on the border of the lines where changes have been made, so they cannot claim that they did not notice a change made to a canned form.

Yet, this allow the signing person to add _other_ changes once the signatures are made, but this custom is useful in the classic 80% of the times (maybe 99% in this case).

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#150

Post by ChuckMcM »

I find arguing with the functionaries at the desk is ineffective, however since they are simply 'doing what they are told' they will often do what you tell them too. I signed a privacy policy where it stipulated the company would pay me $5,000 for each occurrence that it shared any of my information.

It went like this:

Receptionist: "You need to sign this privacy consent form."

Me: "I don't agree with that form so I won't sign it."

Receptionist: "Well if you don't sign it we can't help you."

Me: "Ok, how about this, give me another copy, I'll just mark it up a bit and we can both sign it, ok?"

Receptionist: "Uh, I guess so."

...I take the form, add various and sundry financial obligations, and restrictions on what they can do with my data, add a line at the bottom "representative date"....

Take it back to the receptionist.

Me: "Ok put your initials here, here, and here and sign at the bottom."

Receptionist: "Uh, ok."

Me: "Both copies, thanks."

I then asked on the way out where their legal office was. And and gave them one of the signed copies. The last I saw was that receptionist looking at their marked up form with a very puzzled look. :-)

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