It should be reassuring, in a watch-dog, checks-and-balances kind of way, that the American Civil Liberties Union and 18 other groups are concerned about the national drug store chain Walgreens’ plan to partner with Providence Health, a Catholic health system, to run in-store health clinics in Washington and Oregon. The ACLU’s stated concerns, however, are off the mark, and not reassuring, in that they don’t correspond at all to the actual proposal.
The groups sent a letter to Walgreens, the Associated Press reported, asking whether the clinics would allow access to contraception, abortion drugs and prescriptions to help terminally ill patients end their own lives, which is legal in both states.
The problem: Those aren’t the services provided by walk-in clinics housed inside a drug store. Such a “clinic” isn’t a health system, or a hospital, or a pharmacy. The proposed partnership doesn’t include Providence taking over or running Walgreens pharmacies. Which negates the expressed concern about the availability of prescription and over-the-counter contraception and abortion drugs in Walgreens stores and pharmacies. In 2013, the FDA mandated that the sale of the morning-after pill known as Plan B should be available without a prescription for teenagers starting at age 15. That means it’s available over the counter, or should be. That has everything to do with drug stores, in this case Walgreens, and nothing to do with a Providence walk-in clinic inside stores.
The groups’ most disingenuous, and harmful, argument, however, is that a Providence walk-in clinic, (or a clinic run by anyone, for that matter) located inside a drugstore, would ever be involved, in any way, in a terminally ill patient obtaining a prescription to end his or her life through Washington or Oregon’s “death with dignity” laws. One does not go to a walk-in clinic in search of a physician to ask for a prescription to end their lives. That sounds like propaganda from those who were opposed to Washington and Oregon’s laws.
To end one’s life in this manner requires meeting extremely stringent eligibility rules, and requires two separate doctors to determine that all the criteria have been met. Terminally ill patients already have doctors; these are the people they would need to help them make use of this measure.
The letter also asked whether Walgreens would continue to serve all customers equally, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, the AP reported. It questioned whether transgender men or women would be able to get a prescription for hormone therapy at the clinics.
Again, this confuse the proposed clinics with the existing pharmacies. If one’s doctor prescribed hormone therapy, yes, one can pick that up at a Walgreens pharmacy. But doctors in walk-in clinics, regardless of who runs them, treat colds, sprained ankles or other minor illnesses.
Which is pretty much what Providence said in response to the letter. It also noted that clinic doctors can refer patients to primary or specialty care providers. Walgreens said it had no plans to change its current policies.
Watchdog groups play a crucial role in all areas of life. But stirring up scary scenarios based on bad assumptions is harmful and unhelpful.
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