Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Friday, March 22, 2019

What to do when your Dr. asks "Do you have any guns in the house..?"

I have so far not been asked this question....Yet, I live in GA and this kind of question is frowned upon, but one day it may show up.  I heard of people in other states, their family Dr. asked these questions....I remembered asking this question back in 2013 when Obamacare ramped up and there was a question asked by JPFO.org about the information that you give to your Dr's office especially if it relates to Obamacare and all information that you give them is available to the government and that this would be a backdoor registration scheme.

    I have instructed my son if anybody asked him at school if there are any guns at home, I have instructed to to say "Nope".  I hate telling him to lie, but the present climate forces me to tell him.  He also tell his friends that there are only rifles at his house are his .22 bolt action rifle.   When I am asked if I have any firearms at home, especially by some survey or something...I will lie like a cheap rug and say "NO".  For OPSEC reasons I will not disclose information like that.  It falls under "NONYA",  Same for financial information.

   I got the following article from the "Federalist papers.org


I went to the doctor this morning – nothing urgent, just a checkup for a mid-40s guy who hasn’t been to the doctor in years, but when they gave me that ubiquitous survey about my lifestyle (Do you smoke? How often do you drink?), I was looking for one particular question:
Do you own a gun in your home?


Doctors are increasingly asking this question, and conservative lawmakers are trying to stop them.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott signed a law in 2011 banning doctors from asking about firearms in their patients’ lives, The Washington Post is reporting.
But doctors still think this is a great idea … you know, to protect you from yourself. In a new study, they said that no law should stop them from asking about guns:

".Firearm violence is an important health problem, and most physicians agree that they should help prevent that violence,” wrote Garen J. Wintemute, a public health expert at the University of California Davis and co-author of the paper, in an email to The Washington Post. In the literature review, which doubles as a call-to-arms, the authors conclude it is neither illegal nor unreasonable to ask patients about gun safety.
“No federal or state law prohibits doctors from asking about firearms, counseling about their use, and — when there is imminent risk of harm — disclosing information to others who can help,” Wintemute said. Several states have mulled statutes similar to Florida’s, but none of the proposed bills have passed.
“Physicians seek to prevent important health problems at the individual and population levels,” Wintemute and his colleagues write. “They inquire and counsel—routinely in some cases, selectively in others—about a wide range of health-related behaviors and conditions. In certain circumstances, they disclose otherwise confidential information to third parties to limit the risk an affected person poses to others. Physicians generally do not do well at firearm related injury prevention, however. They ask infrequently about firearms and counsel poorly, if at all, though they are aware that the high lethality of firearms makes prevention efforts particularly important.”
These doctors claim genuine concern about their patients – and that’s probably true. White men who show signs of depression are are at a high risk to commit suicide with a gun, statistically speaking. And simply being forced to confess you keep loaded guns lying around your house within reach of your young children might be enough to convince someone to lock up the guns.
But that’s not the point. The point is that in a political and cultural environment that is increasingly hostile to the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners, telling anyone outside your immediate family that you are armed is a risk. It’s a risk because that information will go on your medical record and if they don’t already, the feds will soon have access to all your medical records.

And it’s only a small step until one day when liberals control all the levers of government and can impose mandatory gun registration or confiscation.
And you’d better believe they’ll use all resources available to them to find out who owns the guns so you may be disarmed. Quickly and without incident.
So what do you do when your doctor asks if you have a gun in the home? Jazz Shaw, writing for HotAir, has a good idea: Lie.
Don’t tell them you do have a gun, because that instantly becomes part of your medical record.
Don’t waffle, or tell the doctor you’re “uncomfortable” answering the question, because they very well may notate that too.
Lie. Right through your teeth. “Why no, doc, I don’t have any guns in the home at all!”
It’s none of anybody’s business anyway.
By the way, that question never was on the questionnaire I filled out. But I’ll be ready next time.

I clipped this back in 2013 and it took a bit of digging to find it, I remembered posting something about this.  I was even annoying poor Old NFO even back then, lol

     I saw this on Old NFO's Blog   And this ties in with what I had posted yesterday, I am reproducing it completely from the links provided by him.(Thank you).  I figured if this get disseminated it will cool off many of the Dr's playing Perry Mason at the behest of the AMA or any other groups that try to play "lets pile on the lawful gun owners" due to the present political climate.  Dr's listen to their malpractice insurance carriers above all and risk management is a big part of their practice especially in the litigious society that we live in.


Physicians, Don't borrow trouble
By
Joe Horn

One of the best games in town is litigation, and litigating against physicians is even more popular (and more successful) than suing gun manufacturers. Physicians and their malpractice insurance carriers are well aware that litigators are constantly looking for new opportunities to sue. Let's talk about one of those new areas of liability exposure.

Nowadays, many physicians and other health care providers are engaging in the very risky, well intentioned, albeit naive and politically inspired business of asking their patients about ownership, maintenance and storage of firearms in the home, and even suggesting removal of those firearms from the home. Some could argue that this is a "boundary violation," and it probably is, but there is another very valid reason why these professionals should NOT engage in this practice -- MASSIVE LIABILITY.

Physicians are licensed and certified in the practice of medicine, the treatment of illnesses and injuries, and in preventative activities. They may advise or answer questions about those issues. However, when physicians give advice about firearms safety in the home, without certification in that field, and without physically INSPECTING that particular home and those particular firearms, they are functioning outside the practice of medicine. Furthermore, if they fail to review the gamut of safety issues in the home, such as those relating to electricity, drains, disposals, compactors, garage doors, driveway safety, pool safety, pool fence codes and special locks for pool gates, auto safety, gas, broken glass, stored cleaning chemicals, buckets, toilets, sharp objects, garden tools, home tools, power tools, lawnmowers, lawn chemicals, scissors, needles, forks, knives, and on and on, well, you get the drift. A litigator could easily accuse that physician of being NEGLIGENT for not covering whichever one of those things that ultimately led to the death or injury of a child or any one in the family or even a visitor to the patient's home. Why open the door to civil liability?

To engage in Home Safety Counseling without certification, license or formal training in home safety and Risk Management and to concentrate on one small politically correct area, i.e., firearms to the neglect of ALL of the other safety issues in the modern home, is to invite a lawsuit because the safety counselor, (Physician) Knew, Could have known or Should have known that there were other dangers to the occupants of that house more immediate than firearms. Things like swimming pools, buckets of water, and chemicals in homes are involved in the death or injury of many more children than accidental firearms discharge [ Source: CDC.] Firearms are a statistically small, nearly negligible fraction of the items involved in home injuries. Physicians SHOULD know that. So, why all of a sudden do some physicians consider themselves to be firearms and home safety experts? Where is their concern for all the other home safety issues that they DON'T cover with their patients? If you are going to counsel in any aspect of home safety, you had better be certified in that subject and cover *all* aspects of home safety, not just the politically popular ones.

Once physicians start down this path of home safety counseling, they are completely on their own. A review of their medical malpractice insurance will reveal that if they engage in an activity for which they are not certified, the carrier will not cover them if (or when) they are sued.

Consider a physician asking the following questions of his or her malpractice insurance carrier:

One of my patients is suing me for NOT warning them that furniture polish was poisonous and their child drank it and died. I only warned them about firearms, drugs and alcohol. Am I covered for counseling patients about firearms safety while not mentioning and giving preventative advice about all the other dangers in the home, and doing so without formal training or certification in any aspect of home safety risk management? You know their answer.

How much training and certification do I need to become a Home Safety Expert Doctor? They will tell you that you are either a pediatrician or you are the National Safety Council. But, you don't have certification to do the National Safety Council's job for them.

Homeowners and parents are civilly or criminally responsible for the safety or lack thereof in their homes. My advice to physicians is to not borrow trouble by presuming to be able to dispense safety advice outside your area of expertise: the practice of medicine. Your insurance carrier will love you if you simply treat injuries and illnesses, dispense advice on how to care for sick or injured persons, manage sanitation problems and try to prevent disease, but stay out of the Risk Management business unless you are trained and certified to do it. For example, E.R. doctors do not tell accident victims how to drive safely.

Now, let's discuss the very serious issues involving the lawful possession and use of firearms for self and home defense, and the danger and liabilities associated with advising patients to severely encumber the firearm(s) with locked storage, or advising the patient to remove them entirely. Patient X is told by Doctor Y to remove or lock up a firearm so it is not accessible for self and home defense. Patient X, does as counseled and has no firearm available at close hand. Subsequently, patient is then the victim of a home invasion and calls 911, but the police are buried in calls and don't arrive for 20 minutes during which time Patient X is raped, robbed and murdered. Anyone can see the liability issue here, particularly Risk Management specialists and liability insurance carriers.

It's just a matter of *when* and not *if* this will happen. Sooner or later, it will - if a home invasion takes place and Patient X takes Doctor Y's advice.

Now, imagine what follows this horrendous but common event. Who is to blame? The perpetrator is long gone, and even so, the Plaintiff's litigator will state that the perpetrator could have been neutralized by the appropriate lawful defensive use of a firearm, which *had* been in the home, but was no longer available to the deceased/injured because he/she followed a Physician's *expert* advice to render him/herself and his/her home defenseless against violent crime

The Litigator will further argue that the Physician Knew, Could have known, Should have known that removing a firearm from use for home defense would result in harm to the patient if and when a crime was committed against the patient in the home, as any reasonable person would have surmised.

If one acknowledges the already dangerous general liability of home safety counseling and then adds the very risky practice of advising patients to disarm themselves in the face of the reality of violent crime daily perpetrated against home owners, condo and apartment tenants, it is apparent that the Physician is placing him/herself in a very risky position for suit.

It is my strong recommendation to Malpractice Carriers and those Physicians they insure to strictly avoid this high risk practice and reserve counseling for the area of expertise in which they are certified: Medicine. In my professional opinion, this is an emotionally charged political issue that Physicians and their Carriers should not be manipulated for whatever well-intentioned reason into taking the risk, which is considerable......

Physicians in doubt of the veracity of what I've said are encouraged to call their carriers and ask them what they currently cover, and to ask if this new counseling policy is covered under the existing policy. We already know what they will say: Don't borrow trouble.
***
Since retiring from the LA County Sheriff's Department, Mr. Horn has provided Risk Management and related issue Human resource consulting to IBM, Gates Lear jet, National Semiconductor, and Pinkerton International Security and Protection Services, among others.

3 comments:

  1. I've never admitted to owning a firearm except when one was stolen. I usually just state that I prefer edged weapons because they never need reloading. This usually shuts down conversation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In the State of Hawaii, you now have to submit a doctors letter saying you are of sound mind and can own a weapon before you can get a permit to acquire. Wrong, unconstitutional? Sure, But we have no attorney's that are wealthy enough to take on the establishment. Because if they do, they'll never have another client. The liberal one party government here sees to that.

    ReplyDelete

I had to change the comment format on this blog due to spammers, I will open it back up again in a bit.