Biden administration counters rash of repressive state laws with LGBTQ+ health care protections
Washington DC – The Biden administration announced on Monday that LGBTQ+ people in America would be protected from discrimination in health care.
According to NPR, the announcement concerns a particular provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination on the basis of "race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in certain health programs and activities."
The Trump administration had removed protections for LGBTQ+ Americans put in place during the Obama years.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will now interpret the ACA provision to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra explained the importance of the decision: "Fear of discrimination can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences. It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone – including LGBTQ people – should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period."
Normally, changing the rules would take a lot of time. But since this move only tweaks the interpretation and enforcement of already existing provisions, the Biden administration can get started right away. The HHS could subsequently seek to add a new rule to further cement LGBTQ+ protections.
Thanks to this new interpretation, HHS will now have greater power to investigate claims of LGBTQ+ discrimination in health care, effective immediately.
What impact will the federal protections have on repressive state laws?
Many Republican-controlled state legislatures have sought to clamp down on LGBTQ+ rights in recent weeks.
In March, Mississippi signed a bill banning transgender girls from participating on female school sports teams. Just weeks later, Arkansas banned gender-affirming medical treatment for trans youth.
The Texas legislature has proposed similar bills that would ban transgender girls from school sports as well as classify gender-affirming medical treatment for trans kids as child abuse. Republican lawmakers hope to pass the measures before the current legislative session ends on May 31.
It is unclear what the Biden administration's announcement will mean for these repressive state laws.
Dr. Rachel Levine, Biden's assistant secretary of health and the first openly transgender federal official, said, "I think that there'll need to be a significant legal analysis about how this guidance and this change in rules interacts with those laws."
Even if it does not automatically override state laws, the Biden administration's ruling may still have a big impact in conservative states like Arkansas, where hospitals and other health care providers rely heavily on federal funding.
"They have state law – with whatever penalty that might be – but breathing down their necks, they have federal regulators that can pull away their Medicare and Medicaid money," Levine explained.
It remains to be seen whether the threat of financial drawbacks will have an impact on these discriminatory state policies.
Cover photo: IMAGO / UPI Photo