By Rachel Alexander, October 21st, 2013
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However, the provision does not go as far as prohibiting doctors from asking their patients if there are any firearms in their home. In January, Obama issued 23 executive actions and orders regarding firearms. Order 16 stressed that Obamacare does not prohibit doctors from asking patients about their firearms, and the fact sheet includes, "Clarify that no federal law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence." What constitutes a "threat of violence" could be very arbitrary. This puts doctors in a difficult position by suggesting they act as pseudo-law enforcement agents. It is damaging to doctor-patient privilege. If doctors have a patient with PTSD or mental illness, and they fail to ask the patient about their firearms, or report them to law enforcement, they could be on the hook later. It encourages them to err on the side of snooping into their patients' guns. This is especially troubling considered the definition of mental illness keeps expanding.
The state of Florida implemented legislation that would have severely restricted a doctor's ability to ask a patient about guns at home, but a federal court struck it down as unconstitutional. After the NRA got that provision added, the organization backed off on pressing for further changes, no doubt because trying to get more changes done at that time would have been impossible with the Democratic-controlled Senate and presidency. But there are still areas within our healthcare laws that could prohibit Americans from owning firearms – specifically our veterans.
Under Obamacare, federal agencies like the ATF can still pore over health records and determine who has mental issues or PTSD. There is nothing in Obamacare that prohibits another federal agency from compiling a database of gun owners.
Gun Owners of America warns that the next step will be linking insurance with gun ownership. Some private insurers, including State Farm and Prudential, drop homeowners from their policies for owning certain types of guns or not using trigger locks. It's not difficult to see how this could be adopted as a requirement of Obamacare in the vague name of "health."
The problem with linking gun control with health care is that everyone knows gun crimes are almost always caused by criminals who illegally obtained the weapons, not law-abiding gun owners. Painting all veterans who have PTSD as potential criminals isn't going to stop the real criminals. There are hundreds of shooting and hunting excursions available for veterans today to specifically help them cope with PTSD. To arbitrarily exclude all of these patriots from rehabilitation with proven results is political manipulation at its worst. Taya Kyle, the widow of the American Sniper who was shot by a mentally ill veteran while helping him shoot for rehabilitation, now speaks out against restricting Second Amendment rights. It wasn't the killer's PTSD that caused the murder, he had a much more troubled history than just PTSD.
Organizations like the NRA and Gun Owners of America continue to expose these sneaky backdoor attempts at gun control. There are plenty of health-care groups clamoring to have Obamacare limit gun ownership, like the American Academy of Pediatrics. They're not going to stop, as revisions can still be added to Obamacare to tweak it. David Satcher, a surgeon general under President Bill Clinton, who headed the Centers for Disease Control in the 1990s, is blatantly open that the goal is to create a national database of gun owners through Obamacare. "Privacy needs to be protected, but it's important that this kind of data be gathered," he said. These feel-good measures actually endanger safety, not promote it. As the NRA's Wayne LaPierre says, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
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ReplyDeleteMD also is trying this with their APPLICATIONS for guns... Data may be shared with 'any' agency including auditors! And agree with the last sentence!
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