My beliefs are that felons are unredeemable and undeserving of any care provision whatsoever. Hence, "just those specific services" becomes all health care.
One should always imagine the worst case when writing good laws. Unfortunately, we all know this law is not meant to be good, it's meant to be a wedge.
this bill does not allow exclusion of medical care based on your beliefs about the patient, but based on your beliefs about the medical care in question.
[It is deeply weird how uncurious the comments on this particular article are.]
you keep saying this, but if a doctor believes that a gay person is not a human being because of religion, this bill would allow them to prevent giving that person any kind of care.
"i have a persistent cough and need a check up."
"sorry, i'm going to deny you a routine check up based on my belief that homosexuality is a sin. providing this procedure to you would be tacit support of homosexuality."
it isn't a "personal boogeyman" because it's literally in the text of the bill. you seem intent on pretending that this is related solely to "procedures" which apply to everyone when that is plainly not what the bill states.
(g) “Health care service” means medical research, medical
98 procedures, or medical services, including, but not limited to,
99 testing; diagnosis; referral; dispensing or administering any
100 drug, medication, or device; psychological therapy or
101 counseling; research; therapy; recordmaking procedures; set up
102 or performance of a surgery or procedure; or any other care or
103 services performed or provided by any health care provider.
104 (h) “Participate” or “participation” means to pay for or
105 take part in any way in providing or facilitating any health
106 care service or any part of such service.
furthermore:
(5) IMMUNITY FROM LIABILITY.—A health care provider or
195 health care payor may not be held civilly liable solely for
196 declining to participate in or pay for a health care service on
197 the basis of a conscience-based objection.
meaning, a secretary in a doctor's office can prevent a gay person from making an appointment for any "procedure" at all because doing so would be facilitating a health care service that they personally object to.
This analysis of "what's the worst that could happen" is insufficient as the appropriate test is "what's the worst that could happen and how often could it happen"
Things that can go very wrong, but which in practice we may expect to be extremely rare are not necessarily large problems.
They are still problems. They can be somewhat neutered when they clearly go against the spirit of the law. Unfortunately, this is not the case here: since the spirit of the law is effectively to move decisive power from patient to doctor on grounds of personal and un-objective opinions, aberrations fit pretty nicely inside it.
Notice how amendments to protect sexual orientation were rejected; that is very much a "worst case" (and statistically significant) that could have been easily avoided, bringing no ill-effects, additional ambiguity or implementation costs. Still, the legislator explicitly decided that case will fit in the law.
One should always imagine the worst case when writing good laws. Unfortunately, we all know this law is not meant to be good, it's meant to be a wedge.