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Wednesday's talker comes to us from the New York Daily News.
A Massachusetts woman says she's outraged after a doctor turned her away because of her weight. Ida Davidson of Shrewsbury, Mass., claims that Dr. Helen Carter, a primary care physician at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worchester (Woo-ster), refused to treat her because she is clinically obese, local television station WCVB-TV reported.
"She was telling me that she couldn't care for me because I was over 200 pounds," Davidson told WCVB. "I can't believe [it] and I did say that out loud, 'I can't believe you guys just said that to me.' I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life."
But Dr. Carter is standing by her decision citing a policy that she will not treat anyone over 200 pounds.
She says she started the policy because several of her employees were injured while helping overweight patients - and there are treatment "alternatives" for those who are obese.
"There's an obesity center at UMass better staffed and has more resources than I do," Dr. Carter told WTVR-TV.
It remains unclear what type of injuries her employees suffered as Dr. Helen Carter could not be reached for comment.
Turning down a patient because of their waistline is not illegal, according to the American Medical Association.
The organization's Council on Ethics and Judicial Affairs policy states that both patients and doctors are allowed to "exercise freedom in whom to enter into a patient-physician relationship."
But medical ethicist Arthur Caplan says that doctors shouldn't turn away overweight patients even if it's allowed.
"I think you have a duty to try and work with people no matter what their health issues are," Caplan told 10 News. "Simply saying, ‘I'm not gonna take someone who's obese,’ is, I think, not the way to approach the whole challenge of obesity, either for that person or for any American."
We're asking Facebook fans today if there should there be laws in place that protect overweight patients from being denied healthcare? Chime in now!
