Doctors required to ask about guns in the home. Do you have to answer?

Doctors required to ask about guns in the home. Do you have to answer?

Prior to the implementation of Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare, one of the executive actions taken by the President was to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to ask (not require) physicians and hospitals to ask new patients and patients being admitted into hospitals for things like same day surgeries about firearms in the home.

Once ObamaCare takes effect in 2014, physicians and hospitals will be required to ask these sorts of questions for new patients.  How do they circumvent the minimal protections?  They won't be specifically asking about 'lawful' possession or storage.  In years past, I've recommended people find a new doctor if their physician attempted to invade their privacy in such a fashion.  Now, physicians will have no choice but to ask these questions.  You won't be able to get away from them... unless you simply stop seeking medical care.

It's important to clarify this is on the Health and Human Services side and not under IRS mandates.  The upcoming 2014 requirements are also separate from executive actions already taken.  Make sure not to confuse the two or let others murky the water by pretending they do.

Undoubtedly some will pop over to snopes.com  before they get to the end of this, so lets deal with that.  Snopes still has misleading information on their site, citing old laws and an old Medicare issue and completely ignoring the upcoming changes in the law.  It probably shouldn't be surprising as Snopes is unabashedly biased when it comes to Liberty issues. This new requirement is contained in the roughly 2,700 pages of new laws passed by Congress slated to take effect next year.

So the question posed is, do you have to answer?  Is there any law compelling patients to answer these invasive questions which have absolutely nothing to do with their medical care?

NO!  You do not have to answer them.  Their is no law requiring you to answer those sorts of questions, the new law requirements are on providers.  Not now and nothing in the 2,700+ plus pages going into effect in 2014 requires you to answer.

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