Charles P. Pierce: There's More Trouble Looming in D.C. Besides a Shutdown

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15748686/hhs-updates/

There's More Trouble Looming in D.C. Besides a Shutdown
A look at what's happening while the shop is still open.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 19, 2018


WASHINGTON—For the past two days, the city has been host to thousands of fresh-faced young people come to town to participate in the annual March For Life, in which the government is entreated through petitions, and the Lord is petitioned through prayer, to toss the privacy rights of 51 percent of the population overboard. In a helpful coincidence, the administration* has tasked its Department of Health and Human Services to give the kids some lovely parting gifts. For example, there’s a whole new HHS division for medical professionals who want to hide their bigotry in the gospels. From The Washington Post:

On the HHS website Thursday, a Conscience and Religious Freedom section outlined the types of procedures likely to come under intensified federal scrutiny — accompanied by a photo of a female health-care worker in a Muslim headscarf. The description of the division's mandate cites abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide as examples of the types of procedures covered. But legal experts said the language appears likely to also cover a host of other scenarios, such as treating transgender patients or those seeking to transition to the opposite sex. It is unclear whether HHS will issue new regulations to clarify its approach to such conflicts, but conservatives said they now have a chance to challenge state reproductive policies as well as other mandates. In June 2016, HHS officials rejected a religious coalition’s complaint against a California requirement that state insurers provide abortion coverage on the grounds that the complainants did not “meet the definition of a ‘health care entity.’”

This has now moved from doctors who don’t want to perform certain legal procedures to the possibility that doctors can decide not to treat certain patients not because of what they want, but because of who they are. These doctors—or nurses, or pharmacists, or whatevers—should lose their licenses on the spot. But now they have an actual federal government office to run interference for them. And the person who’s leading the new HHS division, this Roger Severino guy, is a typical hire in that he’s been put in charge of a henhouse in which he could dine luxuriously.

From Rewire:

Severino co-authored a Heritage Foundation report that criticized a proposed Obama administration rule to prevent health-care discrimination against transgender patients. Severino claimed protections for transgender people would “penalize medical professionals and health care organizations that, as a matter of faith, moral conviction, or professional medical judgment, believe that maleness and femaleness are biological realities to be respected and affirmed, not altered or treated as diseases.”

A complete crock.

The administration* also rescinded an Obama administration order that protected Planned Parenthood from state action. From Reuters

HHS will issue a letter on Friday to state Medicaid offices rescinding 2016 guidance that the Obama administration gave after states including Indiana had tried to defund abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. The guidance “restricted states’ ability to take certain actions against family-planning providers that offer abortion services,” HHS said in a statement. The Medicaid program, jointly funded by states and the federal government, provides healthcare services to the poor and disabled. Federal law prohibits Medicaid or any other federal funding for abortion services. The move is the Trump administration’s latest effort to roll back policies developed under former President Barack Obama.

The table full of seminarians who were downing pints in a local Irish pub Thursday night must have been thrilled.