KILL OR GET OUT OF MEDICINE: WHAT CANADA AND AUSTRALIA TELL PRO-LIFE DOCTORS

Medical Martyrdom Is Coming

“The Culture of Death”

Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Life News — Medical martyrdom is coming, a term I coined to describe doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other such professionals being forced (soon) to choose between their callings and participating in the intentional taking of human life.

That is already the law of Victoria, Australia, where doctors must perform abortions when asked or refer to a colleague they know will do the deed. Some doctors I met there moved across the country to escape the Draconian diktat.

Canada’s Supreme Court recently imposed euthanasia across the country, including for “psychological pain” caused by a diagnosable medical condition. The question now posed is whether doctors will be able to opt out.

So far, it doesn’t look good. The Canadian Medical Association–already weak-kneed on assisted suicide/euthanasia–wants doctors protected. But the Ontario and Saskatchewan Colleges of Doctors and Surgeons want doctors forced, as in Victoria, to do the deed, refer, or if no references are available, forced to kill.

Canadian bioethicist Udo Schuklenk agrees. From his blog:

The very idea that we ought to countenance conscientious objection in any profession is objectionable.

Nobody forces anyone to become a professional. It is a voluntary choice. A conscientious objector in medicine is not dissimilar to a taxi driver who joins a taxi company that runs a fleet of mostly combustion engine cars and who objects on grounds of conscience to drive those cars due to environmental concerns. Why did she become a taxi driver in the first place? Perhaps she should have opened a bicycle taxi company instead.

The very idea that Schuklenk compares driving a taxi to practicing a medical profession, and worries about pollution to the active and intentional taking of human life tells you so much about what has gone wrong in bioethics.

Moreover, when today’s doctors and nurses entered the profession, they weren’t required to kill.

So, this is where we are heading fast: Kill or get out of medicine! More, don’t get into medicine in the first place if you are an orthodox religious believer or philosophically opposed to abortion and euthanasia. You have no place in the medical arts.

It is worth nothing that Schuklenk supports Futile Care Theory. Thus, his anti-medical conscience attitude doesn’t extend to the ICU when patients want life-sustaining treatment the doctor thinks is “inappropriate.” Then, doctors should have a right to say no–even though the most fundamental job of doctors is to keep patients alive when that is what they want.

He also advocates infanticide in some cases.

Can we say, “culture of death?”

When Dutch doctors were ordered by the Nazi occupiers to practice (then) German-style death medicine, they took down their shingles en masse, and won the victory. Will Canadian physicians have similar guts in a society in which dissenters are not murdered?

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About the Author

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism

About LifeNews.com

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IT’S NOT JUST PATIENTS; THOUSANDS OF DOCTORS NOW BEING DROPPED FROM OBAMACARE COVERAGE NETWORKS

J. D. Heyes, Natural News — Don't look now, America, but another very predictable consequence of Obamacare is beginning to play out.

Not only are customers losing their insurance plans - the plans Obama said they could keep - but now, insurance companies are dropping physicians from coverage plans as well.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal:

UnitedHealth Group, Inc., the nation's largest provider of privately managed Medicare Advantage plans, has dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks - spurring protest from lawmakers and physician groups and leaving many elderly patients unsure about whether they need to switch plans to keep seeing their doctors.

Obamacare Regulations ‘Driving Our Actions’

The paper said physicians in at least 10 states have received termination letters. Some of those letters have cited "significant changes and pressures in the health-care environment."

In addition, the notices inform doctors that they can appeal the decision within 30 days, but that means doctors and patients won't know for certain who is in, and who is out of, UnitedHealth's Medicare Advantage networks before open enrollment to switch Medicare plans ends on Dec. 7.

The insurer said its provider networks change constantly, and it expects its Medicare Advantage network "to be 85 percent to 90 percent of its current size by the end of 2014." But the company would not say how many providers are being curbed in individual states, or what criteria it is using to cut them.

Company officials say they are making their decision based on financial concerns - concerns that are being influenced solely by the mandates contained in Obamacare. Officially, they say United Healthcare is taking the action to provide more value for its customers, but that is corporate-speak for, "We're making this move because we've been forced to do it."

"That's what's driving our actions," Austin Pittman, president of UnitedHealth's networks, told WSJ. "It's no secret that we are under substantial funding pressure from the federal government."

While the company reported a third-quarter profit of $1.57 billion last month, its CEO, Stephen J. Hemsley, has said the outlook for next year is much more cautious, citing expected cuts in Medicare payments that are tied to the Affordable Care Act (and if you thought only Republicans "want to cut Medicare," remember that no Republican voted for the Affordable Care Act - only Obama's Democrats).

Medicare Advantage is a Medicare alternative. It combines hospital and physician coverage that includes prescription drugs and other benefits and perks, like gym memberships.

Since 2004, enrollment in Medicare Advantage has nearly doubled to 13 million in 2012; that represents nearly 27 percent of all Americans enrolled in Medicare.

As explained by WSJ:

The federal government pays private insurers a per-capita fee to manage the benefits. The rate is currently about 12 percent more than the average Medicare patient spends annually. The Obama administration plans to cut those extra payments to insurers by about $150 billion over the next 10 years to help pay for the health law. Some experts expect enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans to decline sharply if that occurs.

More Patients For Same Number Of Doctors Equals Nightmare

Humana Inc., Aetna Inc. and Wellpoint Inc. are also Medicare Advantage providers. They told WSJ that they are evaluating their provider networks at the time, but physician groups say none of them appear to be reducing them to the extent that UnitedHealth is doing.

"UnitedHealth is the biggest player, with nearly three million members in Advantage plans, many of them sold under the AARP brand. The company says it had over 350,000 doctors in its Advantage provider networks," says the paper.

That patients would have less access to physicians because of Obamacare - for one reason or another - was entirely predictable. For one, the law calls for insuring tens of millions more people but ignores the basic law of supply and demand: More patients trying to access the same number of doctors means more waiting time, less access and greater dissatisfaction with the system.

You might be able to "mandate" that more people have insurance, but you can't decree there be more doctors. It takes an average of 10 years to train a primary care physician, and seven to train a nurse practitioner and physician assistant.

How exactly can adding 35-40 million more patients to an already overloaded system work?

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