Patient-doctor confidentiality is no longer sacrosanct.
The House of Representatives plans to use the IRS and taxation as a means to prohibit abortion in the U.S. The vote on HR3 was 251 for, 175 against. It is intended to bar women from deducting abortion-related medical expenses from their taxable income. It would also bar tax credits that employers and others receive if they provide abortion coverage in employee health benefits.
The GOP/teavangelists plan to use taxation to punish women and families that have legal medical procedures performed.
Further evidence of such intent can be found in last Wednesday’s 192 for, 235 against defeat of a Democratic motion to prevent the IRS accessing a woman’s personal medical records to determine for taxation purposes if she is/was a victim of rape &/or incest.
Not only is this a violation of physician-patient confidentiality, it is akin to making sexual assault and its aftermath a political weapon similar in nature to that used in religion-motivated wars in the Balkans and in Sudan.
The concept of an unobtrusive government and assured personal freedom appears on placards and t-shirts at every teavangelist rally. Somehow it vanishes at the bedroom door of every woman who doesn’t agree with allowing the teavangelists to ram their theology down the throats of all Americans. Their demand to lower and simplify taxes seems forgotten when they can use taxation to attempt to overturn the right to medical treatment as determined by a woman and her physician.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the Congressman from the 1st district of TN is a retired Ob/Gyn. He voted to allow the IRS to become a politically – driven weapon. One has to wonder how firm his prior commitment to patient confidentiality has been. Does the patient-doctor privilege only exist between him and those patients who march in lockstep with his religious beliefs?
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