Photo via Deidre Lewis
A Florida doctor has fired the latest shot across the bow in the battle over implementing President Obama’s health care bill. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Dr. Jack Cassell, a urologist with an office near Orlando, made his disgust perfectly clear over “Obamacare,” as its opponents deride it, by taping a sign to his front door that read:
“If you voted for Obama…seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now.”
Cassell said that he wasn’t necessarily rejecting care for patients, but merely voicing his opinion on Obama’s health care overhaul. “I’m not turning anybody away—that would be unethical,” Cassell, a Republican, told the Sentinel. “But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it.”
Medical ethics experts interviewed by the Sentinel said that while Cassell wasn’t blatantly discriminating against patients—political leanings aren’t legally protected when it comes to discrimination law—the doctor was “trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation,” said the expert, William Allen, a University of Florida professor of bioethics. Cassell also papered his waiting room with GOP-produced fliers on the health care bill, the Sentinel reported, and featured a sign near those documents that said, “This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it, and vote out anyone who voted for it.”
Cassell’s office, it turns out, is located in the district of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), the tenacious, outspoken lawmaker who once said the GOP’s health care mantra was “If you get sick, America…die quickly.” An outspoken urologist with a grudge against Democrats and Obamacare should give Grayson, known for his office’s entertaining mailers and occasionally outrageous remarks, plenty of material to work with.
