Trump's 'disturbing and unethical' new rule allows discrimination against Dems and single women

Editor’s Note: In an email to AlterNet, VA Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Macaulay Porter demanded this article’s retraction, issuing a point-by-point rebuttal of multiple claims including that "individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.”

“False,” Porter wrote. "Federal law prohibits that, and VA will always follow federal law.”

AlterNet will update this story as more information becomes available. Read the original below.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has long had strict anti-discrimination rules. A VA center cannot refuse to treat a veteran because he or she is Black, Jewish, a woman or Latino, for example.

But according to The Guardian's Aaron Glantz, an executive order from President Donald Trump allows some forms of discrimination.

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In an article published on June 16, Glantz explains, "Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law. Language requiring health care professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated."

The executive order that Glantz references in his article was issued by Trump on January 30 and titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."

Glantz notes that the "primary purpose of" Trump's executive order was "to strip most government protections from transgender people" but warned that its "far-reaching" effects could go way beyond that.

"Until the recent changes," Glantz explains, "VA hospitals' bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients 'on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter.' Now, several of those items — including 'national origin,' 'politics' and 'marital status' — have been removed from that list. Similarly, the bylaw on 'decisions regarding medical staff membership' no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or 'lawful political party affiliation.'"

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Dr. Arthur Caplan of New York University's Grossman School of Medicine is highly critical of Trump's executive order, describing the new rules as "extremely disturbing and unethical."

Caplan told The Guardian, "It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff. What we typically tell people in health care is: 'You keep your politics at home and take care of your patients'… Those views aren't relevant to caring for patients. So why would we put anyone at risk of losing care that way?"

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Read Aaron Glantz's full article for The Guardian at this link.