Wildlight said "If the doctor is self employed or otherwise not employed by the state (meaning any level of government) then he may be foolish or inhumane for refusing to treat someone of a different religion but for the state to compel the doctor to treat the patient against the doctor's wishes is confiscation of his skills by the state."
WRONG in many instances.
1. Emergency care - there is a well-recognized obligation of the emergency room and its physicians to treat (stabilize) any patient who arrives in an medically unstable condition. This is FEDERAL law, dating from 1965 or so. There is NO emergency facility that does not take federal money (Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare/CHAMPUS).
2. Any physician who takes government insurance - Medicare, TriCare /CHAMPUS (the insurance entity for uniformed and civilian employees of the Armed Forces and other federal agencies), Medicaid - must be willing to treat all comers with that insurance, as long as the physician has practice time available and provides the needed skills. Physician can't say, I am only going to treat white guys with prostate cancer, and tell the black guys with prostate cancer, get lost.
3. "Concierge" private practice physicians who do not accept any form of insurance and who charge a flat rate per year for access can pretty much get away with discrimination because there is no insurance oversight of such practices, no paper trail. Pretty much the only way to definitively identify illegal discrimination would be by sending out sequential "testers", as was done for realtor and landlord discrimination cases. "Concierge" practices are pretty rare - basically these guys are physicians to the hedge fund barons or others who find it no problem to spend $30,000.00 a year to have 24-7-365 access.
4. The state has every right to confiscate the state licenses of physicians who commit fraud, abuse, and other illegalities directly connected to their practice of medicine, and will confiscate the licenses of physicians who commit felonies outside the scope of their medical practice (murder, serious assault, stalking and threatening a judge). The national specialty boards likewise have the right to confiscate the physician's board certification.
Don't bother listening to Ben Carson, former neurosurgeon and current Republican long-shot Presidential primary candidate. He's cracked. He wants to take government money but doesn't want to abide by the rules. But then again, most physicians don't really respect other physicians who abandon their skills to become pundits or politicians.