For over a century, the healthcare industry has been trying to figure out how to bring care to those who need it most. Marginalized patients are those with little-to-no access to care, or who feel alienated from care. For example, Elevate Holistics serves rural, elderly, homebound, and veteran patients who might not otherwise have resources or access to medical cannabis certification. How do we do it? With telemedicine.
We are a HIPAA compliant platform with doctors that are passionate about cannabis medicine. For them, telemedicine is a tool in the practice of medicine that does not change the standard of care. Telemedicine provides equal rights for patients to access medical marijuana.
But some Missouri legislators want to ban those rights. Now more than ever—with the coronavirus outbreak; with so many veterans in need; with a rapidly increasing elderly population; and in a state that is predominantly rural—telemedicine is vital to Missouri medical marijuana patients. To prohibit it would be unconstitutional.
Why Telemedicine Is Important
Healthcare systems have been trying to figure out how to use telemedicine for over a century now. Why? Because there has always been a considerable portion of the population that is alienated from medical care—either they can not get to medical care, or medical care cannot get to them.
We live in an age of technology when that just should not be an issue … And yet it is.
One of the greatest barriers to telemedicine is legislators. In Missouri, senators and representatives are very close to passing a bill (SB 764) that would ban telemedicine for some of the medical cannabis patients who use our platform, many of which cannot leave their homes.
These are the same legislators whose attitudes towards medical cannabis forced Missouri voters to successfully facilitate a constitutional amendment for medical cannabis through the initiative process. We did not ask their permission for a medical cannabis program, and we do not have to settle for them restricting access for many patients. It is unconstitutional.
Why Banning Telemedicine Is Unconstitutional
Not only does the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) already allow a physician to certify patients through telemedicine, but Article XIV explicitly prohibits legislators or (the Department of Health and Senior Services) from enacting any laws that would cause an undue burden on patients.
Passing SB764 would most certainly cause an undue burden on patients.
The legislators that we elect are not above the majority’s resolve. They do not decide what is best for us, but on behalf of us. In order to suitably carry out the will of the people, they must refrain from injecting their own agendas into what the majority has already decided and established.
Watch this video. It is disturbing how no consideration was given to medical cannabis patients by Senator Onder and others when presenting the bill that would ban telemedicine for cannabis patients to the senate committee. Elevate Holistics would also recommend this brilliant investigative video by online social activist Nate Bullman.
Cannabis patients’ voices aren’t being represented in the Missouri legislature. Elevate Holistics urges everyone to contact their senators and representatives and make them understand that this unconstitutional maneuver is not the will of the people.
