Religion poses workplace challenges

[darkstar3]

22. Those are more false equivalencies

A doctor who does not process through a specific insurance provider is not flatly refusing to perform part of their medical care function. They're simply saying that you'll need to find another way to pay for it.

A doctor who refuses to treat patients under or over a certain age does so specifically to protect the patient, because pediatrics and geriatrics are two very different fields, and patients have different needs that must be seen to. These doctors are not refusing to perform part of their medical care function.

A doctor whose office is closed during the week is almost always open on a day during the weekend to accommodate more patient schedules. Furthermore, whether or not they are open on the weekends, these doctors are again not flatly refusing to perform part of their medical care function.

In fact, in all the cases you can throw out where doctors seem to have special rules that have to be "accommodated" by their employers or their patients, not one of them ventures into the realm of a doctor, under completely normal circumstances, flatly refusing to perform part of their medical care function.

Doctors who refuse to perform legal and safe medical procedures, and pharmacists who refuse to dispense legal and necessary drugs, are refusing to do their jobs. They are unprofessional, and they shouldn't have applied for a job where they couldn't fulfill the requirements.

(There is one exception, and that is when the procedure in question is beyond the skill of the doctor. Referrals are always necessary and good in those cases. But I'm talking about the doctors who refuse to perform procedures and also refuse to refer, because they feel that the procedure itself violates their sensibilities.)