Illinois Court Permits Religious Pharmacists To Refuse To Dispense Emergency Contraception
Source: Think Progress
An Illinois appeals court upheld a ruling Friday that exempted pharmacists with religious objections from prescribing emergency contraceptives, finding that the medical professionals were protected by state law. The plaintiffs, both individual pharmacists and corporations that own pharmacies, had challenged an order by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich requiring that pharmacists sell “Plan B,” a brand of the contraceptive also known as the “morning-after pill.”
The court rejected the ACLU’s argument that prescribing emergency contraceptives fell under an exception in the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience for “emergency medical care,” even though doctors testified that the contraceptive was most effective when taken immediately after unprotected intercourse.
The three-justice panel did narrow the scope of the lower court’s ruling, which had entirely blocked the governor’s requirement to provide contraceptives. The appeals court held instead that the state law merely prohibits enforcement of the order against plaintiffs who claim a religious exemption.
The court’s decision to allow individual pharmacists to claim the protection of the law is not particularly surprising, given the Illinois statute’s broad wording: “No physician or health care personnel shall be civilly or criminally liable to any person, estate, public or private entity or public official by reason of his or her refusal to perform, assist, counsel, suggest, recommend, refer or participate in any way in any particular form of health care service which is contrary to the conscience of such physician or health care personnel.”
I hope I can post this here.....
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/26/909341/illinois-court-permits-religious-pharmacists-to-refuse-to-dispense-emergency-contraception/
The real outrages claim of this religious right, does not apply to corporations.... They can block employees from their religious rights?
= new reply since forum marked as read
the cover of the GOP platform
That would also mean that if any of their ''patients'' suffers a healthcare problem as a result of their refusal to provide them with legal pharmaceuticals ordered by their doctors, then they're legally and financially liable just like any doctor and/or hospital would be when they fuck up.
- How nice.....
...I wonder if they'll stop selling condoms too.
- Especially to married men......
have been notoriously extortionate. This already happens all the time and its a racket. I can't even begin to dissect your post. You must know about this as an MD. Its common practice!
"When a pharmacy sells the heartburn drug Zantac, each pill costs about 35 cents. But doctors dispensing it to patients in their offices have charged nearly 10 times that price, or $3.25 a pill.
The same goes for a popular muscle relaxant known as Soma, insurers say. From a pharmacy, the per-pill price is 60 cents. Sold by a doctor, it can cost more than five times that, or $3.33.
At a time of soaring health care bills, experts say that doctors, middlemen and drug distributors are adding hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the costs borne by taxpayers, insurance companies and employers through the practice of physician dispensing.
Most common among physicians who treat injured workers, it is a twist on a typical doctor’s visit. Instead of sending patients to drugstores to get prescriptions filled, doctors dispense the drugs in their offices to patients, with the bills going to insurers. Doctors can make tens of thousands of dollars a year operating their own in-office pharmacies. The practice has become so profitable that private equity firms are buying stakes in the businesses, and political lobbying over the issue is fierce. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/business/some-physicians-making-millions-selling-drugs.html?pagewanted=all
If they won't do the job they can do something else.
