GOP - small government? Nah - they want to be in every aspect of your life.

GOP abortion foes are criminalizing the doctor-patient relationship (Click on this heading to read more)

Rss@dailykos.com (jon Perr)
Sunday, February 16, 2014, 4:50 pm
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"The doctor-patient relationship." 

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For more than 20 years, conservative propagandists and their Republican allies have used that four-word bludgeon to beat back universal health care reform. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." Kristol's successful crusade to derail Bill Clinton's reform effort was greatly aided by future "death panels" fabulist Betsy McCaughey, who wrongly warned that Americans would even lose the right to see the doctor of their choice. Twelve years later, President George W. Bush proclaimed, "Ours is a party that understands the best health care system is when the doctor-patient relationship is central to decision-making."
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But when it comes to abortion and women's reproductive health, the GOP mantra about protecting "doctor-patient" isn't just demagoguery of the basest kind. It is a cruel and vicious hoax. Even as the nation's abortion rate has dropped to a 40 year low, dozens of draconian restrictions enacted in Republican-controlled states are mandating that physicians lie to their patients, perform unnecessary procedures in needlessly regulated facilities and even withhold potentially lifesaving care. Now, Republicans aren't just standing over the shoulders of American doctors who put their patients' health first; they want to put them in prison, too.