Florida Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Gun Law Modified

Here's a follow-up to my March post about the Florida bill to outlaw physicians from asking their patients about access to firearms. Dinah later posted about the effects of the bill on pediatricians. The bill passed, though it was amended to remove the jail time and the potential $5M fine (a bit excessive?).

The Florida Medical Association originally opposed the bill, but now has expressed satisfaction with the compromise language. In March, Asher Gorelik, M.D., president of the Florida Psychiatric Society (FPS), expressed to Psychiatric News his membership's opposition to the bill, particularly “a great deal of concern about how this law would interfere with the ability of the healthy to properly assess a patient.” But in a recent follow-up interview, Gorelik stated that the new language in the bill “no longer interferes with the ability of a healthy to perform a risk assessment.

~Psychiatric Times