I’m not sure where to even start with this story. Again, Donald Trump hasn’t even been back in the White House for five full months, and we’ve already seen multiple stock market crashes, mass deportations, threats of an American invasion of Canada, threats of an American invasion of Greenland, a complete abdication of America’s NATO responsibilities, the vice president killing a pope, a growing Middle East war, the most insane tariff policy ever, ICE goons assaulting a US senator, political assassinations in Minnesota and the United States military conducting an illegal incursion ON AMERICAN SOIL. And I’m leaving out like two hundred other terrible things. Well, now the Trump administration has made it “legal” for Veterans Affairs doctors and medical staff to deny treatment to Democrats and unmarried veterans.
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump. The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.
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 healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.
Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.
In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings. Medical experts said the implications of rule changes uncovered by the Guardian could be far-reaching.
They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected”, said Dr Kenneth Kizer, the VA’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care – including allegations of rape and sexual assault – current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use”.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the nation’s largest integrated hospital system, with more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics. It employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually.
I got two paragraphs into this article and my gut said “I bet this started out as an anti-transgender move.” I was right. These people are going to “defend women” back to the g–damn Stone Age. “We’re all about defending women, that’s why we’re giving VA doctors the right to refuse to treat rape victims and female veterans having miscarriages!” It’s not lost on me that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are two of the biggest drag queens in DC and yet they have a visceral hatred of “gender-affirming care.” Anyway, just a reminder – doctors swear to the hippocratic oath and to state medical boards. If you’re a veteran and you’re denied treatment, sue everybody and report the doctors to the medical board. This is a Supreme Court case waiting to happen.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
