WASHINGTON – Attorney General Karl A. Racine today joined with 18 other attorneys general in opposing a Trump Administration proposal that would dramatically expand the ability of businesses and individuals to discriminate on the basis of “religious, moral, ethical, or other beliefs” in the provision of health care. In a comment letter to HHS officials, the attorneys general opposed a new rule proposed by the administration to allow the discrimination.
The letter says that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed a rule that would unlawfully expand purposefully narrow existing protections -- without consideration of the consequences. For example, the rule would allow businesses, including employers, to object to providing insurance coverage for procedures they consider objectionable. The rule would also allow individual health care personnel to object to informing patients about their medical options or referring them to providers of those options. Finally, the rule would impose particularly enormous burdens on marginalized patients, including LGBTQ patients, who already confront discrimination in obtaining health care.
Placing the objections of businesses and health care workers above patient safety and care violates existing federal and state laws and undermines state public health efforts to ensure access to care, the letter says. Additionally, the proposed rule unconstitutionally seeks to coerce the states’ compliance with its unlawful requirements by threatening to terminate billions of dollars in federal health care funding if HHS determines that the states have failed—or even “threatened” to fail—to comply with the rule.
Because HHS’s proposed rule would increase the risk of harm to patients and because it would be inconsistent with the text of several federal and state laws and the Constitution, the attorneys general are urging that the proposed rule be withdrawn.
Click here to read the letter, which was led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and was also joined by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state.