Democrats call on the White House to stop Trump’s plan to allow doctors to refuse treatment to trans people
The Trump administration has focused fire on LGBT+ rights (Mark Wilson/Getty )
A group of over 100 Democrats have called on the White House to reject a plan to allow doctors to deny treatment to trans people.
The policy recently announced by the Trump administration would allow healthcare professionals to refuse to treat LGBT+ people if they have a religious objection.
Trump’s proposed change, a part of wider Republican healthcare reform, would remove an Obama-era protection and would allow doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies to deny coverage or treatment for religious reasons.
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Opponents of the removal highlight that this could mean that LGBT people and people who have had abortions could be legally refused healthcare.
On Wednesday, 127 Democrats in the House of Representatives called upon the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to reject the proposal.
In a letter, the group of congresspeople wrote to OMB director Mick Mulvaney to reject the proposed legislation, stating the policy would be very harmful to women and LGBT people, who already often experience discrimination.
The congresspeople criticised the proposals as setting a dangerous precedent.
“No one should be denied health care because of who they are,” said Congressman Nadler of New York.
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Californian Congresswoman Brownley added: “Rolling back the Health Care Rights Law would open the door for health care providers and insurance companies to deny individuals care based on their personal beliefs, which would threaten women and LGBTQ individuals across the nation.”
The letter also highlighted that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently removed guidance regarding gender identity and sexual orientation from their website.
In 2016, Mulvaney described Democratic efforts to protect LGBT+ people against discrimination as “a political move designed to shipwreck the appropriations process.”
The Congressman has scored zero on the Human Rights Campaign’s ranking on LGBT equality for both of his terms in the House.
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In April, the Justice Department confirmed to the New York Times that the Department of Health and Human Services had submitted a draft of the new policy.
Trump’s proposed rule would remove an Obama-era protection and would allow doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies to deny coverage or treatment based on gender identity.
Related: There’s no such thing as a transgender broken arm
The 2016 rule was set up to complement other parts of the Affordable Care Act and banned health insurers from putting arbitrary limits on trans healthcare or discriminating based on gender identity.
Due to this rule, transgender Americans were able to access gender confirmation surgeries which previously could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Despite mass criticism about the removal of the protections, the policy is set to be rolled out despite estimated costs of over $300 million.
This potential rule follows a legal challenge against the anti-discrimination rules by a group of medical professionals.
A federal judge in Texas stopped the protections based on gender identity, stating that in the law, Congress had banned discrimination based on sex but argued that this did not include gender identity.
