This,
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002149492_chavez14m.html, is a very disturbing story that I hope does not represent a new trend.
Jamie Chavez knew her Richland obstetrician felt strongly about limiting medical-malpractice awards. He bent her ear and offered pamphlets every time Chavez, pregnant with her first baby, visited him for prenatal care.
But she couldn't believe Dr. Mark Mulholland's reaction in November when she refused to sign a petition at the doctor's office for an initiative to limit jury awards in malpractice cases.
"I was kind of fired as a patient," she said.
If you follow the link and read the whole story,
you will see that it cause and effect was not quite that direct. The doctor did not tell his patients to sign or else, but he did lobby them repeatedly to sign. It was when he specifically asked Mrs. Chavez why she would not sign that:
"She basically expressed that people ought to be able to sue for everything they can," he recalled. "And that is just so philosophically different than how I feel, I didn't want to continue the doctor-patient relationship."
It seems to me that having your doctor urge you to sign a petition that affects their livelihood would be a very uncomfortable experience even if there is no implication that refusing would affect your relationship with them.
I particularly bothered by this quote that suggested that this practice may have been common in the state medical association's efforts to get the initiative on the ballot.
Tom Curry, spokesman for the Washington State Medical Association, which sponsored I-330, said there have been no complaints to the association from patients feeling overly pressured by doctors, who helped collect the 315,000 signatures by "engaging their patients in this exercise in civic responsibility."