Trump’s policy to let doctors discriminate against trans people will cost $300 million to set up
Donald Trump: most definitely not a queer icon (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
A policy-announced by the Trump administration which would allow healthcare professionals to refuse to treat LGBT+ people if they have a religious objection, will cost the US hundreds of millions to put in place.
Under the proposed new rule, medical staff would be permitted to cite their religion as a reason to refuse treatment of any kind to trans people.
The policy has been criticised by a number of human rights and LGBT rights groups and activists.
A doctor talks to her patient (stevanovicigor)
And now there’s yet another reason to be angry at the announcement. The cost.
A government estimate now predicts that implementing the policy will cost a staggering $300 million.
The cost will be covered bty hospitals, offices and pharmacies, and other medical facilities, and is estimated at $300 million tos et up.
It is then esitmated to cost another $125,000 a year to maintain after it is established.
The policy changed has been criticised by rights groups.
“We now know exactly how much it means to the Trump-Pence administration to be able to discriminate against a woman in need of reproductive care or an LGBTQ patient seeking medical treatment,” DNC Women’s Media Director Elizabeth Renda and LGBTQ Media Director Lucas Acosta said in a statement,
“The Trump-Pence administration is willing to sacrifice hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to allow health workers to deny care to Americans in need on the basis of ‘moral conscience.’ This is nothing but a burdensome, costly, and thinly veiled partisan attack from Republicans desperate to sabotage the American healthcare system.”
The move would also protect health workers who don’t want to perform abortions.
The US is currently embroiled in a battle between so-called religious liberty and LGBT people that centres on whether homophobic Christians should have the ability to discriminate against gay people.
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Of that vein, Trump has created Religious Freedom Day, in a presidential proclamation issued yesterday that constituted a clear assault on LGBT rights.
He made the decision after breaking with Barack Obama’s eight-year tradition of issuing annual proclamations recognising June as LGBT Pride Month.
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Back in December, his administration told the Supreme Court that it should be acceptable for businesses to put up signs denying service to same-sex couples.
And Trump’s government is moving into a new, dangerous territory with its insistence that Christians shouldn’t have to help LGBT people.
The Health and Human Services’ civil rights division is run by Roger Severino, a Trump appointee who has repeatedly spoken out in favour of religious groups’ rights over those of LGBT people.
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He made these views clear in a 2016 report for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank which held the second anti-LGBT summit that Trump spoke at last year.
Severino and a co-author wrote: “On the basis of religious teachings, moral reasoning, scientific evidence, and medical experience, many have strong grounds to hold that one’s sex is an immutable characteristic.
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“Many involved in providing medical care and those enrolled in health insurance plans have serious objections to participating in or paying for sex-reassignment surgeries or gender transitions.”
The Democratic National Committee has condemned the proposed rule as “unethical and dangerous”.
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In a joint statement, director of women’s media Elizabeth Renda and director of LGBTQ media Lucas Acosta said: “Once again, women and the LGBTQ community are under attack from the Trump-Pence administration.
“Days before the anniversary of the Women’s March, Republicans are giving health workers a license to discriminate against women and members of the LGBTQ community.
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“It wasn’t enough to try to strip transgender Americans of their right to serve, roll back access to birth control, and attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.
“Now Trump, Pence, and their Republican cronies want to allow health care workers to discriminate and rip away access to medical care,” they continued.
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“This rule is unethical and dangerously undermines public health.
“This proposal is further proof that Republicans continue to push forward an agenda completely out of step with the American people and American ideals.
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“Democrats will continue to focus on how to improve access to health care for all Americans regardless of gender, orientation, or income.”
