Pangs of Conscience

I never joined Promise Keepers. If you don’t know the organization it’s a fellowship of Christian men who prove their faith by eating breakfast together at O-Dark-Thirty. Apparently keeping a promise over lunch is just too worldly.

So, I’ve always turned down invitations, knowing that being anywhere at that time of the morning is the first promise I’d break.

The importance of one’s word brings to mind The Crucible – Arthur Miller’s take on the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) couched as the Salem Witch Trials.

Here’s a fun historical fact, HUAC was a creature of a majority-Democrat House of Representatives, the GOP only held the majority for four years of the twenty-three that Inquisition was in existence.  

In Miller’s Salem, as in HUAC’s Hollywood, the way to save oneself was to confess being a witch (Commie) and name other witches or affirm the sin of those already named as such.

In the play, John Proctor represents artists like screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who refused to cooperate with HUAC and were jailed and blacklisted.

The dark night of Proctor’s soul comes after he learns that his wife is with child. So by signing a confession he could raise the child he’s longed for.

Proctor is given pause by that fact. He composes but then tears up rather than sign his confession. Why? As Proctor says, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life. Because I lie and sign myself to lies! …How may I live without my name?”

Pretty cool stuff, the kind of honorable behavior a person wants to emulate – although I admire Proctor’s friend Giles Corey even more. Corey was slowly crushed to try to force his confession. Knowing that if he doesn’t confess his sons will inherit his farm Corey’s last words are, “More weight.”

With Democrats once again just fine with the federal government using its Counter Intelligence Program to spy on Americans, I might get my shot at going out like Giles.

For now, like John Proctor, I have to settle for refusing to sign my name to a lie. However, my inquisitor was neither church nor state but my doctor’s office.

I like my doctor, she’s friendly, knowledgeable, and at my annual wellness exam she always laughs at my impression of Chevy Chase singing Moon River – the three traits I admire most in a health care professional.

I do not like the company into which my doctor’s medical group has catalyzed.

I take prescribed hydrocodone for back and knee pain. Like many prescription opioid users, for the last several years I’ve jumped through more and more hoops to get my meds. Meanwhile illegal opioid use continues unabated. Prohibition never works.

Like any arrangement among free people medical care should be a service contracted between provider and client. It should be free from government intrusion. But that desideratum is an impossible dream post-Obamacare.

The government is likely behind or, at least, the inspiration for my being asked, as a condition of picking up my prescription, to sign a pain treatment with opioid medications patient agreement based on the one found at drugabuse.gov.

The agreement presumes you’re abusing drugs. In fact, when I stopped in to sign it I was ambushed and told I had to submit to a urine exam as well to get my prescription.

Like any well-trained adult, I’d gone before I’d left the house (“Because we’re not stopping!”) but I was willing to give it the old college try until I read the agreement which presumed that I’m not an adult at all.

They wanted to reach into my home and family life in ways that are no one’s business but my own.

They wanted me to surrender my rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to them or risk be dropped as a patient, including agreeing to open-ended “including but not limited to…” stipulations.

All my records are tied to my birthdate, they should know I wasn’t born yesterday.

I didn’t sign. I’d rather live in pain than lie and pretend to sign away rights I have absolutely no intention of ceding to anyone.

If your provider asks you to sign a similar document, search your conscience before signing. Don’t give away your rights.

Where recognizing patients as free citizens with inalienable rights is concerned, the government-health insurance/care complex has lost sight of the most basic medical principle, “First do no harm.”

(a version of this material originally appeared in the Lewiston Morning Tribune)