Trump to overhaul HHS office, shield health workers with moral objections

[SummerSnow]

By DAN DIAMOND and JENNIFER HABERKORN 01/16/2018 10:06 PM EST Updated 01/17/2018 08:58 PM EST

The Trump administration on Thursday will announce an overhaul of the HHS civil rights office as part of a broader plan to protect health workers who don't want to perform abortions, treat transgender patients seeking to transition or provide other services for which they have religious or moral objections.

Under a proposed rule — which has been closely guarded at HHS and is now under review by the White House — the civil rights office would be empowered to further shield these workers and punish organizations that don’t allow them to express their religious and moral objections, according to sources on and off the Hill. That would be a significant shift for the office, which currently focuses on enforcing federal civil rights and health care privacy laws.

HHS is planning to announce the changes at its headquarters Thursday morning.

The department's leaders have repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for rolling back regulations dating to the George W. Bush administration that legally insulated health care workers while affirming their religious freedoms.

Roger Severino, the Trump administration appointee who now leads the HHS civil rights office, has repeatedly stressed that strengthening conscience protections for health care workers is a top priority for his office.

That's alarmed advocates for LGBT patients, who say they're already fighting to overcome stigmas and discrimination and who warn that the policy shift will only worsen their situation.

"This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are," said Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality. "Any rule that grants a license to discriminate would be a disgrace and a mockery of the principal of religious freedom we all cherish."


https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/16/conscience-abortion-transgender-patients-health-care-289542

[greymattermom]

1. How can this work?

I think that all health care job applications in the future will include a question about refusal to do parts of the job. The question is not about religion, but just a requirement for taking the job, sort of like being able to lift 40 pounds, stand, etc. Hospitals can't function with a group of employees who refuse to work.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Yes. LGBTs come into a the ER and the staff walks away, letting them die?

And the federal government says this is legal?

The hospitals and clinics are going to have huge liability issues.
Families are going to sue. Violation of civil rights and is wrongful death.

And it is a horrendously immoral act, to let people die like this.