Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.
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Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.
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Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment.
The Guardian
Nuts. Of course it could be that some idiot carelessly left out a part while copying. Couldn't it? It's hard to know what's incompetence and what's intention in the Trump regime.
Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items – including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” – have been removed from that list.
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Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation”.
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Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.
I guess it couldn't.
In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.
Transgender. How do marital and political status fit into that?
They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected”, said Dr Kenneth Kizer, the VA’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care – including allegations of rape and sexual assault – current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use”.
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In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that the new rules allowed doctors to refuse to treat veteran patients based on their beliefs or that physicians could be dismissed based on their marital status or political affiliation, but said “all eligible veterans will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law”.
Sure. I have complete confidence.
He said the rule changes were nothing more than “a formality”, but confirmed that they were made to comply with Trump’s executive order. Kasperowicz also said the revisions were necessary to “ensure VA policy comports with federal law”. He did not say which federal law or laws required these changes.
Did you ask him? He doesn't know.
In interviews, veterans said the impact of the new policy would probably fall hardest on female veterans, LGBTQ+ veterans and those who live in rural areas where there are fewer doctors overall.
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Under the new policy, some may have to register at a hospital in another region and travel more than a hundred miles to see a doctor. It “could have a huge ripple effect”, she said.
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The changes are part of a larger attack on the independence of medicine and science by the Trump administration, Caplan said, which has included restrictions and cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, last week fired every member of a key panel that advises the government on vaccines. The Guardian has earlier
reported on a VA edict forbidding agency researchers from publishing in scientific journals without clearance from the agency’s political appointees.
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