At our institution, we have a Patient's Bill of Rights that every patient is given when they are admitted to the hospital that includes, among other things, certain guarentees of the following:
Access to Care, Transfer, and Continuity of Care
Respect and Dignity
Confidentiality
Access to Your Medical Record
Access to Information About Your Condition, Treatment and Prognosis If Known
Communication with Visitors and People Outside the Hospital
Access to Informed Consent
Acceptance and Refusal of Treatment
Access to Pain Management
Access to Protective Services.
Would you also like included that "no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type" and "No law shall interfere with a person's right to pay directly for lawful medical services..."
Welcome to the heart of the national health care debate: Proposition 101 in Arizona, the
Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act:
(WSJ) Universal coverage plans, regulated by government, nearly always try to restrain costs by restricting the choices individual can make. This assumes a uniformity in the real-world of patients or the practice of medicine that simply doesn't exist, especially amid rapid developments in medical science. Who should decide -- the patient or a government treatment schedule -- whether a cancer sufferer should be able to try an experimental therapy or under what circumstances a senior citizen gets a hip replacement?
Government run health care proponents do not like this ballot initiative. In fact, as
mentioned (subscription) in the
Wall Street Journal today, opponents are spending four times as much as supporters in Arizona to defeat Proposition 101.
So if you were voting today, which would you choose, yeah or nay? Think about it. Review the pros and cons on the debate at the link above, then vote on my sidebar.
Hey, why should folks in Arizona have all the fun?
-Wes
