Day 1,240: On the four-year anniversary of Pulse shooting, during a pandemic, Trump rolls back healthcare protections for LGBTQ community
Donald Trump’s disdain for huge swaths of the health and well-being of all but his most ardent supporters — and sometimes, their health and well-being is disregarded too — has reared its ugly head again.
In new rules aimed at rolling back a variety of healthcare protections, discriminating against members of the LGBTQ community will be far easier after a Friday announcement.
The Trump administration on Friday finalized a rule that would remove nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people when it comes to health care and health insurance.
It is one of many rules and regulations put forward by the Trump administration that defines “sex discrimination” as only applying when someone faces discrimination for being male or female, and does not protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The rule focuses on nondiscrimination protections laid out in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. That federal law established that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in certain health programs and activities.” In 2016, an Obama-era rule explained that protections regarding “sex” encompass those based on gender identity, which it defined as “male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”
Trump’s team rolled back protections that protected LGBTQ patients from discrimination. During a pandemic. On the four-year anniversary of the shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse that killed 49 and injured many more. All to please the Christian right. And get the focus off of protests against police brutality.
The move — long sought by some of President Donald Trump’s supporters in the conservative Christian community — is the latest effort by Trump to mobilize his religious base amid criticism over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak and the recent protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody.
The Trump administration overhaul, which had been years in the making, came against warnings from health care groups that the rollback could make it easier for hospitals and health care workers to discriminate against patients based on their gender or sexual orientation.
The idea is to strip vulnerable people of a specific community of rights that inherently make them safer.
The man who leads the Office for Civil Rights at the HHS, Roger Severino, is “deeply conservative and religious” and, in his own words, “a big believer in [religious] conscience.” He has pushed for the change for over a year and ridiculously defended the most recent round of changes as a cost-saving measure. In the past, he has openly tried to curb a number of items in the name of religious freedom. For instance, he previously tried to allow “doctors to refuse to provide care that contradicts their religious or moral beliefs,” which a federal judge eventually knocked down.
Lest anyone Friday’s confluence was a one-off crazy coincidence, just two days ago, Trump announced that his next rally would come on Juneteenth in the city that had one of the worst race riots in American history, in a state that is electorally relevant.
As always, the cruelty and insensitivity is the point.
1,240 days in, 222 to go
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