Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) has introduced S686 and Assemblymember Jaime Williams (D-Canarsie) has introduced A3860 to restore the authority of physician to issue medical exemptions to their patients without interference, and prohibit school personnel who have no medical training from participating in the medical exemption decision making process.
Historically the Chairs of the legislature Health Committees including Richard Gottfried, Amy Paulin and Gustavo Rivera have all had bills to allow the treating physician to make the decision
The problem with the medical exemption making process had long been recognized by the leadership of the legislature, Former Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried, and Senate Health Committee Chair
Getting a medical exemption has always been difficult in New York. When we had a religious exemption, physicians routinely told patients who needed a medical exemption to go get a religious exemption citing their fear of retaliation by the New York State Department of Health and a possible threat to their medical license.
NYS and NYC Departments of Health are eliminating longstanding exemptions.
In the last several years, we have seen a marked increase in the number of children who have had longstanding medical exemptions, sometimes for ten or more years, arbitrarily cancelled by school employees who have no medical training.
Senate bill S686 by Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Suffolk County) and Assembly bill A3860 by Assemblymember Jaime Williams (D-Canarsie) would reassert that medical exemptions are to be determined by the child’s physician and that school personnel have no role in making these decisions.
New York has the lowest medical exemption rate of any state, and it is now 50% of 2018
New York has the lowest rate of medical exemptions of any state at 1 in 1000 students, and the rate has fallen by 50% since 2018, according to the CDC. Obtaining a medical exemption is so difficult that families are often forced to choose between needlessly endangering their child or losing the child’s right to attend school. Many of these families end up leaving New York.
TAKE ACTION
We need more State Senators, especially Democrats, to co-sponsor S686. This action is directed toward convincing more Democratic State Senators to help kick-start this bill
Please use the panel to the right to send a message to your State Senator asking him or her to co-sponsor the A3860/S686.
Call your State Senator and ask them to support A3860/S686.
Look up your State Senator here: https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator
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TALKING POINTS
The law says the patient’s doctor makes the decision about a medical exemption.
New York Public Health Law Section 2164, Paragraph 8 is explicit:
"If any physician licensed to practice medicine in this state certifies that such immunization may be detrimental to a child's health, the requirements of this section shall be inapplicable until such immunization is found no longer to be detrimental to the child's health."
The law says the decision is up to the child’s doctor.
NYS and NYC DOH have perverted the law so that school Personnel with no medical training make the decision.
But over the years, the NYC and NYS DOH progressively eroded the authority of the physicians who actual treat children, and allowed school personnel with no medical credentials to routinely override the medical decisions of physicians, thereby allowing school employees to practice medicine without a license, which is a felony in New York.
The Departments of Health bullies doctors and schools with threats of investigations and loss of medical licenses into not writing or accepting legitimate medical exemptions.
Schools also frequently reject the attending physician’s opinion and defer to consultant physicians hired by the district.
Educators have no legal responsibility for the health of a child, the doctor does
The child’s physician has a legal and moral obligation to put the best interest of the child first. The school district’s physician has no such obligation, and usually defer to supporting policies to maximize vaccine uptake, and avoid hassles with the Departments of Health, regardless of potential risks to the child in question.
NYS & NYC CDOH threatens doctors who write medical exemptions
Before the 2019 repeal of the religious exemption in New York, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of families, in New York had the experience of a physician telling them that their child should not receive some or all vaccinations for medical reasons, only to be told by the physician to go get a religious exemption because they were either afraid of retaliation from the Department of Health or afraid that the medical exemption would be denied.
New York's legislators were well-aware of this situation in 2019 when they voted to repeal the religious exemption. We thoroughly documented the problem and spent hundreds of hours explaining the situation to legislators. They knew that thousands of families would be faced with the choice of either pulling their children out of school, many of them with special needs, or subjecting their children to vaccines that their physician, sometimes multiple physicians, have told them could do lasting injury to their child. But they voted for the repeal anyway and did nothing to assure that medically fragile children were protected.
Advocates for the repeal of the religious exemption made a great deal of noise about the need to protect immune-compromised people, at the very same time they were making it nearly impossible for immune-compromised children to be protected.
NYS&CDOH threaten schools that allow medical exemptions
The Health Departments routinely intimidate schools by telling them if they make the “wrong” “decision on a medical exemption the school could receive $2000 per day per “wrong’ exemption.
Cuomo created regulations that only permit exemptions AFTER an injury has already occurred
In August of 2019, Governor Cuomo made the situation much worse with new regulations that only allow a medical exemption when a child has already had a documented near-death anaphylactic reaction to a previous vaccine. The clear intent of the law was to allow physicians to use their judgment to protect children from potential harm, the regulations now pervert that goal and, at best, only allow possible protection from re-injury.
The result is that getting a medical exemption in New York became extremely difficult, and nearly impossible in New York City.
This is a problem only in New York and California
This bill will restore a measure of sanity to New York's insane vaccination policy and puts the health of the child first and stops school personnel from practicing medicine without a license.
It does not create a policy based on informed consent, which is the only acceptable policy in any country that claims to be a democracy that respects individual rights, but it is an important step in the right direction and will help get thousands of medically fragile children back in school.