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Healthcare Freedom
Patient's Bill of Rights
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"A patient has the right to access any mode of treatment that is, in his or her own judgment and the judgment of his or her health care practitioner, in the best interests of the patient, including complementary or alternative health care treatments . . . "
On May 31, 2001, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed into law an amendment to the Florida Patient's Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (Florida Statute 381.026) authorizing provision of and access to complementary or alternative health care treatments.
It establishes the right to access any mode of treatment a patient or patient's health care practitioner believes is in patient's best interests.
The Intent of the Legislature is to ensure that citizens be able to choose from all health care options, including the prevailing or conventional treatment methods as well as other treatments designed to complement or substitute for the prevailing or conventional treatment methods.
The Intent of the Legislature is to ensure that citizens be able to make informed choices for any type of health care they deem to be an effective option for treating human disease, pain, injury, deformity, or other physical or mental condition.
The Intent of the Legislature is that health care practitioners be able to offer complementary or alternative health care treatments with the same requirements, provisions, and liabilities as those associated with the prevailing or conventional treatment methods.
"Complementary or alternative health care treatment" means any treatment that is designed to provide patients with an effective option to the prevailing or conventional treatment methods associated with the services provided by a health care practitioner.
Such a treatment may be provided in addition to or in place of other treatment options.
Within the context of vaccination policy, complementary or alternative health care treatment does not in and of itself constitute a religious belief.
The fundamental premise upon which most complementary or alternative health care treatments are based is the view that healing is an innate process that relies upon the integrity of all the functional and physiological body systems, with the immune system as the primary feedback mechanism for maintaining the health of the organism.
Vaccination, the process of injecting foreign toxic materials into the bloodstream, is not considered by many complementary or alternative health care practitioners to be the most efficacious way of stimulating, strengthening or maintaining healthy immune response to both infectious agents and degenerative disease processes.
Many religious beliefs regard the physical body of a person as its "temple", and they promote the sanctity of the internal milieu as sacred.
This belief is congruent with the premises upon which alternative health care therapy is predicated.
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