Trump administration rolls back LGBTQ health care protections
An Obama-era regulation that forbids discrimination based on sex has been rewritten to eliminate specific protections for LGBTQ patients.
LGBTQ patients will likely have a tougher time of it in seeking treatment, in the wake of the Trump administration’s repeal of protections put in place under the Obama administration.
A regulation that not only forbids discrimination based on sex but also specifically protected LGBTQ patients has been rewritten to eliminate the latter provisions, according to Politico.
Under the guise of making its regulations “more consistent” with those of other agencies, the Department of Health and Human Services released its proposed new regulations, Politico points out, “on a Friday before [a] holiday weekend,” and two days after the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a similar step in allowing federally funded homeless centers to deny services to transgender people.
Related: Even with insurance, LGBT individuals delay medical care
Religious groups had challenged in a lawsuit the Obama-era rule extending the nondiscrimination protections provision, Section 1557, to gender, and in 2016 a federal judge blocked those protections. But while the Trump administration claims that it rewrote the rule to make it compliant with the judge’s ruling, the rewrite actually goes further and eliminates protections that were not blocked.
“They’re adding explicit religious exemptions and completely eliminating prior protections for LGBTQ people,” Katie Keith, a Georgetown University law professor, told Politico.
While Roger Severino, the director of the HHS civil rights office, has championed the proposed rewrite of nondiscrimination provisions, denying that it was intended to put patients at risk, the American Medical Association and 30 other medical groups, oppose the move and warned the Trump administration that its plan would put LGBTQ patients at risk.
In a letter to Alex Azar, HHS secretary, the groups wrote, “To reduce the cost of health care and achieve our goal of creating a healthier nation, the specific needs of LGBTQ patients must be examined and effectively addressed.”
Advocacy groups have said they’ll challenge the move in court. “The Trump-Pence Administration is sanctioning blatant discrimination in health care by attempting to reverse the landmark health care rights law,” said Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center. “We are prepared to protect and defend patients against this dangerous attempt to reverse their rights.”
Among its other actions, HHS has also announced as a money-saving measure the elimination of requirements to accommodate those with disabilities and those who do not speak proficient English that would oblige organizations to mail many documents in 15 different languages; the report cites HHS as saying that the move would cost the industry $3.2 billion over five years when according to Severino, “the overwhelming majority of these mailing inserts are sent to English speakers.”
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