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by Steve Strayer
| Tue, 8 Jan 2008 |
Anything You Say to Your Doctor May Be Used Against You
It is annoying that innocent people in America must carefully guard their words and actions in the presence of government officials to avoid providing excuses for harassment. Even more frightening, however, are the growing array of incentives quietly put into place for private individuals in privileged positions to betray the trust of fellow citizens.
On the occasion of my daughter's 18th birthday, I thought back to a few weeks before her birth, when my wife's gynecologist warned us about something called postpartum depression. Sure enough, as Sachi rearranged her life to accommodate a newborn baby, she began feeling exhausted and despondent. For her routine one-month check-up we took our baby to Palo Alto Medical Clinic in Fremont, Calif., the private facility we had always trusted for medical services. After confirming the baby's health, the doctor asked how Sachi and I were doing. Sachi mentioned casually that she was depressed.
The doc's friendly demeanor suddenly changed, and he insisted that I wait outside. Soon he reappeared and announced that he had arranged "psychiatric help" for Sachi with the "crisis nurse" at Washington Hospital. When I questioned the need for psychiatry, his tone became threatening, and he indicated he would follow up to ensure compliance with his orders. I sensed that a crisis nurse was somebody we didn't want to get involved with and advised the doc that it was not his place to give us orders. Sachi, however, hoping to get something to help her rest, urged me to drive her to the hospital.
The crisis nurse, as advertised, quickly created a crisis. She insisted that Sachi immediately see a psychiatrist, and since we had no medical insurance, ordered that Sachi be taken by ambulance to Highland Hospital, where charity cases are processed. At this point Sachi and I both wanted to go home, but the nurse threatened to have us arrested if we left. We were terrified. After confirming with a friend that the nurse could indeed have us arrested for disobeying her, I attempted to negotiate some peaceful way out for my family. Intent on pushing her crisis to the limit, however, the nurse rejected every sensible alternative to an ambulance ride to Highland.
We refused demands to fill out forms authorizing "services" or to provide any personal information, but apparently the nurse got everything she needed from our trusted M.D. Sachi, the baby, and I were forced to endure a 75 mph ambulance ride, with rock music blaring, to Highland, a rather shabby institution located in a bad area of Oakland. Sachi was led into a locked psycho ward while I was forced to wait outside with our month-old baby among several strangely behaving people.
Fortunately, the psychiatrist soon came out questioning why we were there. After I described the incident, he shook his head knowingly, made a note on a form, and released us. We were denied copies of that form and all other paperwork involved in the incident, except for bills. Soon we received outrageous bills from the clinic whose M.D. had initiated the whole mess, from Washington Hospital, from Highland Hospital, and from the ambulance company. We refused to pay any of them, and they were all eventually dropped, but the ambulance company badgered us for several years before finally giving up and placing an adverse item in our credit records.
Section 5150 of California's welfare and institutions code allows involuntary confinement up to 72 hours (extendible to indefinitely) of anybody who in the opinion of a cop, attending staff, or "other professional person" may endanger others or himself. Section 5278 exempts from liability anyone who has somebody locked up under 5150. Nothing precludes legal action against private practitioners for allowing people to remain free.
To physicians ever mindful of the explosion in frivolous lawsuits and the whim of the bureaucracy controlling their precious medical licenses, the message is surely clear: When in doubt, they must sacrifice the welfare of patients, the judgment of concerned family and friends, the Hippocratic oath, and every other ethical consideration to the state's voracious appetite for oppression.
Americans have been systematically kept in the dark about government-sponsored abuse of innocent people in our country, and when such an incident does become known, many of us doubt the accuracy of its description. Had I read an account like the one above before this happened to us, I probably would have discounted it as an exaggeration. Perhaps some of you feel that way about this one.
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