Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Under the so-called Affordable Care Act — a law that conservative voters hoped would have been repealed by now — doctors and other medical professionals faced government penalties if they turned away individuals who sought sex “reassignment” procedures.
But the Trump administration has set out to protect them.
The New York Times reported the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to rescind a rule that applied to most doctors, medical facilities, and insurers that accept Medicaid and Medicare. An excerpt (emphases added):
The rule was adopted in 2016 to carry out a major civil rights law embedded in the Affordable Care Act. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance.
The Obama administration said the rule covered “almost all practicing physicians in the United States” because they accept some form of federal remuneration or reimbursement. It applies, for example, to hospitals that accept Medicare and doctors who receive Medicaid payments, as well as to insurers that participate in health insurance marketplaces.
Trump administration officials said they believed they had to modify the rule because a federal judge in Texas had found that parts of it were unlawful.
“The Department of Health and Human Services has submitted a draft of a proposed rule” to the White House for clearance, the Justice Department told the judge this past week. And the White House confirmed that it was reviewing the proposed rule on “nondiscrimination in health programs.”
As the Times reported, a federal court temporarily stopped enforcement of the law as it pertains to “gender identity” and killing unborn babies, and President Donald Trump likely will approve HHS’s rule change.
Regardless of the Trump administration’s justification for rolling back the rule, it’s good for medical professionals, especially religious ones, who oppose removing the sex organs of people pretending to be the opposite sex.
With “health care” under the rubric of federal non-discrimination law, the Obamacare provision essentially made it illegal for professionals with moral objections to normalizing homosexual behavior to refuse to perform certain procedures. The law might have affected professionals who didn’t want to perform these procedures based on medical judgment as well.
Conservatives generally oppose Obamacare — and were baffled that Republicans didn’t try harder to block it — because they knew it would open up a world of religious and free-speech issues. As homosexuals gain more “rights,” the rights of Christians and others who oppose this lifestyle weaken. Pretty soon, uttering anything against homosexuality will be criminalized.
Coming to a future near you: the Gospel of Jesus Christ as “hate” speech.
Somewhere out there are millions of gays and lesbians who pray in Christ’s name each and every night…and they’re not going to stop doing so regardless of what others may think of their lifestyle.