The Obama administration is capping off a week of forcing Americans to accept gender ideology as normal with a final rule on Obamacare’s nondiscrimination policies in healthcare.
The rule will require physicians, hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare entities that receive federal funds — such as Medicare and Medicaid — to include gender transition treatments and even abortion among their services for the alleged sake of “equity.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the final rule on Obamacare’s (Affordable Care Act’s) Section 1557 Friday, stating it will “help to advance equity and reduce health disparities by protecting some of the populations that have been most vulnerable to discrimination in the health care context.”
HHS states the rule covers:
- Any health program or activity, any part of which receives funding from HHS (such as hospitals that accept Medicare or doctors who accept Medicaid);
- Any health program that HHS itself administers;
- Health Insurance Marketplaces and issuers that participate in those Marketplaces.
The Obama administration claims its new rule “builds on” prior federal civil rights laws to prohibit sex discrimination in health care.
HHS continues:
The final rule requires that women be treated equally with men in the health care they receive and also prohibits the denial of health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping. The final rule also requires covered health programs and activities to treat individuals consistent with their gender identity.
For individuals with disabilities, the final rule requires covered entities to make all programs and activities provided through electronic and information technology accessible; to ensure the physical accessibility of newly constructed or altered facilities; and to provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services for individuals with disabilities. Covered entities are also prohibited from using marketing practices or benefit designs that discriminate on the basis of disability and other prohibited bases.
Covered entities must take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to each individual with limited English proficiency eligible to be served or likely to be encountered in their health programs and activities. In addition, covered entities are encouraged to develop and implement a language access plan.
The final rule on Section 1557 does not include a religious exemption; however, the final rule does not displace existing protections for religious freedom and conscience.
During a week of threats of the loss of federal funding to states and schools that do not bow down to its contrived gender ideology, the Obama administration now forces doctors and hospitals to do the same – or else have their Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursements eliminated.
“As bad as the ACA is, it’s laughable to suggest that when Congress referred to ‘sex’ in Section 1557 it was referring to anything other than biological sex,” says Breitbart News Legal Editor and religious liberty lawyer with First Liberty Institute Ken Klukowski, adding:
This is Orwellian. But beyond that, it is an unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment that the Obama administration is forcing their rejection of biological fact onto people whose faith teaches that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to what they have meant for thousands of years, and that God purposefully created them that way.
Family Research Council (FRC) voiced its opposition to the new rule: “Family Research Council is strongly opposed to the new Obamacare final rule mandating federally funded health care providers offer services that include gender transition and even abortion,” said FRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Christensen on Friday. “HHS’s final rule concocts out of thin air a redefinition of sex discrimination to include both gender identity and abortion.”
Christensen explains:
This intolerant and unjust rule, in turn, threatens to force health care providers to participate in and perform services that substantially violate their consciences. HHS’s regulatory overreach to force “gender identity” into Obamacare through the language of “sex discrimination” mirrors the administration’s actions earlier today imposing gender identity on America’s public schools. Despite concerns raised by FRC and others that the proposed rule also included abortion, the administration chose instead not to exclude it. This action erodes Americans’ freedom to believe and act in accordance with their beliefs, not only as it relates to the privacy of the bathrooms but also now when it comes to the taking of innocent human life. We urge Congress to address this gross injustice.
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, tells Breitbart News the new rule amounts to the Obama administration attempting to turn the traditional code of medical ethics on its head.
“It appears that the government is presuming to dictate medical ethics, and to turn them upside down: Thou SHALT do whatever we say, rather than thou SHALT NOT do evil things, such as killing, harming, or lying to patients,” she said. “In the Oath of Hippocrates, physicians swear to God, not government to “follow that method of treatment which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients” – not to follow bureaucratic guidelines for the benefit of ‘population health.’”
Orient added:
Transgender treatment, especially to minors, inflicts irreversible harm on persons too young to consent. It constitutes radical, nonconsented social experimentation. Chemical or surgical castration should be considered a crime against humanity. Affirming a patient’s delusions (e.g. that he really is a she) is considered psychiatric malpractice in other contexts.
Orient said that such a rule will lead conscientious doctors and hospitals to stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements from the federal government in order to be free to conduct their medical practices using their own ethics and consciences as their guide.
“To preserve their integrity and avoid being an accessory to crimes against humanity, doctors and hospitals will have to turn down the government money,” she explained. “This will also free them from a suffocating burden of costly regulations, enabling them to offer superior care at a fraction of today’s prices–and to preserve patient privacy.”
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