Last week, K105 published an article originally published by Kentucky Today detailing GOP state Sen. Steve Meredith’s Senate Bill 83, a bill he authored intended to “protect healthcare providers from retaliation for refusing to perform a medical procedure that violates their conscience.”
Click here to read the article.
Facing backlash from many commenters, Meredith on Friday morning posted a response to those critical of the bill on his official Sen. Steve Meredith Facebook page.
Meredith’s full, unedited response to the criticism:
I appreciate K105 posting this story about my Senate Bill 83, An Act protecting the exercise of medical ethics within the medical profession. Everyone needs to be aware of legislation which affects your everyday life.
However, I was not prepared for some of the hateful, rude, insulting, bigoted and obviously uninformed posts made in reaction to the story.
My primary motivation for filing this bill is to stop the intrusion of corporations and government into healthcare decisions which should be made by the people trained, skilled and experienced to do so – healthcare professionals. This bill is an attempt to prevent situations such as the one which occurred in New York where thousands of COVID-19 infected nursing home patients were callously and prematurely discharged back to their nursing home. The result was rampant infection of other nursing home patients causing the needless and tragic death of thousands.
A patient cannot be discharged from a hospital without a discharge order from their healthcare provider. So, why were COVID-19 infected patients discharged??? Because, the Governor of New York demanded it. Out of fear of the loss of their license to practice, the ruination of their career and livelihood, loss of their job and having a black mark on their record for the rest of their life, no one dared challenge the Governor of New York. This billed, if passed, will provide healthcare professionals with the protection they need and deserve in order for them to make decisions which are truly in the best interest of their patients without fear of retribution.
And, this is not an isolated incident. In Alabama, their state government developed and approved an emergency plan for ventilator distribution in the case of a shortage of ventilators which would allow for denying ventilator services to individuals based on the presence of intellectual disabilities “including profound mental retardation” and “moderate to severe dementia.”
In Texas, a patient’s chemotherapy treatments were halted in anticipation of a flood of COVID-19 patients. My list could go on and on.
Prior to the 1960s, healthcare was a cottage industry comprised of physicians in independent practice and not for profit hospitals. Today, less than 15% of physician are in private practice and the practice of corporate medicine has become the norm. Coupled with government involvement in healthcare, a wedge has been driven between the patient and their healthcare provider and that wedge evolved because of the quest to increase corporate earnings and for the government to control costs and ration care. Everyday the ability for a healthcare provider to have the authority to make decision in the best interests of their patients is being eroded.
This bill is about the future and who will be making decisions about healthcare – who gets it and who doesn’t.
Unfortunately, a small group of bigoted people have tried to hijack this bill and falsely claim it is something it is not – discriminatory.
Nowhere in this bill is a single word which would allow or promote discrimination against anyone nor provide protection for those who do discriminate. Three times during the committee hearing on the bill those who testified against this bill claiming it would cause rampant discrimination were asked to identify the language in the bill to support their . They could not identify such language. Their response was that “discrimination is inferred.”
Absolutely no one who needs healthcare will be denied healthcare as a result of the hopeful passage of this bill. The language in the bill speaks specifically to this.
This bill protects both healthcare providers and their patients. Without it, we will all be victims of profit over people and bureaucracy over compassion.
By Ken Howlett, News Director
Contact Ken at ken@k105.com
