Tell Trump Administration to NOT Roll Back Health Care Rights Law Impacting Women and LGBTQ People

By MUUSJN on Friday, August 9th, 2019

Everyone should be able to get the health care they need without the fear of being turned away, shamed or treated unfairly. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (administered through the Department of Health and Human Services) prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability. This protection extends to most hospitals, health care providers offices, health insurance companies, state marketplaces, and entities receiving federal funds such as Medicare (except Part B providers), Medicaid and CHIP. This law was the first broad federal protection against sex discrimination in health care. This law (Section 1557) means that individuals seeking health care can not be discriminated against based on the color of their skin, their gender, the sexual orientation, how old they are, if they have a disability, which language they speak or their nationality.

However, the new Trump Administration rule would illegally allow discrimination back into our health care system. The latest version of the Trump rule allows attacks on LGBTQ people, people seeking reproductive health care, including abortion; rolling back protections for people with limited English proficiency; and immigrants. Specifically, the proposed rule:

  1. Goes out of its way to carve out gender identity and sexual orientation from the law, opening the door for insurance companies to deny treatment of LGBTQ people;
  2. Refuses to say if HHS will enforce Section 1557 for those discriminated against based on termination of pregnancy, miscarriage and those who need abortion care.
  3. Incorporates a religious exemption to undermine the prohibition on sex discrimination;
  4. Dramatically rolls back language protections for individuals with limited English; and
  5. Removes protections against marketing and insurance company discrimination.

(Source: The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Advocacy to oppose the new regulations is called for by the National LGBTQ Task Force; In Our Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda; National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice; National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum; and the NWLC

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!

AUGUST 13TH deadline to comment on these anti-rights rules

Click HERE to submit your testimony through a National Women’s Law Center web portal

It can be powerful if your comments include stories about how people will be impacted by these new regulations. This action was strongly recommended by MUUSJN’s Interfaith Reproductive Justice Coalition. For more information on the Coalition, call Randy, 248-549-5170.

Category: News | Tags: , ,